


Typhon: Genesis

by Ezallamir



Series: Through The Looking Glass [4]
Category: Prey (Video Game 2017), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mineta Minoru Doesn't Exist, Bakugou Katsuki is a Good Friend, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Good by Bakugou Standards, How Do I Tag, Midoriya Izuku Does Not Have One for All Quirk, Midoriya Izuku Has a Quirk, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Shinsou Hitoshi is in Class 1-A
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 58,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezallamir/pseuds/Ezallamir
Summary: Izuku always knew he'd be a hero. No matter what anyone, or his rapidly evolving quirk, had to say about it.
Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Shinsou Hitoshi, Midoriya Izuku & Toogata Mirio
Series: Through The Looking Glass [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820905
Comments: 128
Kudos: 331





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though reading the previous parts aren't totally necessary, there are important details and explanations from the previous stories that will be referenced in this one. Please enjoy!

_ Some people will never understand or condone what you can do. They can only fear and condemn.  _

"Stop!" A small form shoved himself between the group of elementary students and the cowering kindergartener they had been picking on. "You made him cry! Stop it!" 

"Oh, so this villain already has minions?" One of the older kids stepped forward, his arms encased in brilliant white crystal. "His quirk is bad enough and now he's getting the likes of you to defend him?"

Izuku refused to back down. "Minami's quirk isn't bad, it's great for heroics! He could stop villains in their tracks with a single touch! He could end situations instantly without casualties or property damage!"

Another bully scoffed at him. "That weirdo froze the teacher for forty minutes! They had to call a pro to come and fix his mess." The kid flexed his own black claws. "He could rob anyone he wanted. Or kill. Better to teach this villain his place now before we have to figure out his victims later."

Izuku glared at the lot of them. "I won't let you hurt anyone!" He refused to move from his spot in front of his crying classmate. He couldn't fight them, because that would make this his third fight in a month and then the teachers would definitely call his mom. Again. So he'd just take the beating and then the upperclassmen would leave. Nothing they could say would change his mind. 

Chibana, whose quirk allowed them to bloom any flower from their skin—which was so cool!—had remained silent up until now, stepped forward. “If you think we’re afraid of some baby villain, then you must be as insane as your crazy mother.” 

Izuku’s eyes flashed white. Chibana was yanked towards the two younger children before he had even realized what was happening. In an instant, Izuku punched him with all of his might right in the face.

Crystal-arms yelled, “get the villain!” as he and the other two jumped to defend their friend. Izuku could only protect his head and wait for the onslaught to end.

“Hey! What are you extras doing?!” The punching stopped but Izuku refused to look up until Kacchan’s explosions chased off the bullies. Last time he’d put his arms down too early, he’d gotten socked in the face and had to brave seeing his mom cry over a black eye. She wouldn’t let him leave her side for a whole week! Better to just wait them out.

“Oi! They’re gone. Get up, stupid.” Kacchan stood over him, blocking the sun. 

“I’m not stupid Kacchan.” Izuku picked himself up, brushed off some dirt from his shorts, and turned to Minami. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did—” He was cut off by a harsh shove.

“You should have just left it alone!” Minami yelled as he stood over Izuku. “They all call you a villain more than me. Now they’ll never stop!”

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to help.” His eyes began to prickle. 

“You only ever make things worse! I don’t want your help!” The kid ran off as Izuku lost the battle with his tears and they began to cascade down his face. 

“Tsk...asshole.”

Izuku laughed wetly and swiped at his tears. “Not supposed to say that word Kacchan.” 

“Don’t care.” Bakugou glared down at him. “And its stupid to help someone that don’t want it.” He reached a hand down to his friend. 

“We’re gonna be heroes!” Izuku smiled up at him and took the helping hand. “Saving people is what we do. Whether they want help or not!”

——————

The birth of the glowing child in Qingqing threw the world into chaos. Rapid human evolution manifested itself as quirks, special abilities unique to the individual. Already existing inequities in power among different classes were upheaved. Racial, economic, ethnic, gender, and cultural battles were far less important than quirked vs not. A global paradigm shift in what it meant to be human and what it meant to be  _ more _ . The singularity known as the Advent of the Extraordinary. 

People fought, people raged, targeting those as a threat. Violence and discrimination against those with a quirk and returned violence against the perpetrators. Ordinary people, quirked or not, took up arms to fight back the chaos until the government could create legislation themselves. And when the dust settled, the most righteous of these fighters were declared Heroes. But those that continued to use their quirks with no licence, for their own gain, or to hurt others were Villains. 

Villains broke the law. They killed. They stole. They destroyed healthy relationships. Villains didn’t have a productive life. Villains only served to get beaten by their betters and thrown in jail to rot. Villains were the opposite of everything considered acceptable to society and a villainous quirk was the first sign that a child would be nothing but trouble. They were prone to acting out, misusing their quirks, starting fights, skipping school, and running away from home. Within a decade, kids with unappealing quirks went from delinquency to villainy. 

Four the first four years of his life, Izuku Midoriya had a relatively weak object manipulation quirk. It was nothing spectacular, just a bit more flexible than his mom’s own quirk, even if it was surprising that it had manifested in his infancy. That all changed when a little after his fourth birthday, Izuku shocked his class by turning into a copy of the ball they were playing with. The entire school rioted.  _ People  _ didn’t have multiple quirks.  _ Normal people  _ didn’t have quirks that changed from levitation to transformation.  _ Good people _ didn’t have a mother that was investigated for lying about their child’s quirk and have to prove their mental health. 

If Izuku had a questionable quirk and was neither normal nor good, well then he must be  _ bad _ . And bad kids became bad people who became bad villains. Izuku’s one true wish was to be a hero and he could count on one hand the number of people that thought he could do it. Thought he could be anything more than just a villain in the making. Just waiting to snap. 

——————

“Who am I kidding? You all want to be heroes!” The class answered him with cheers, but the teacher quickly calmed them down. “You know that it’s against school rules for you all to use your quirks, wonderful as all they are.”

“Wonderful?” a scathing voice called out over the class. “These extras’ quirks are as crappy as they are!” Students booed loudly at Bakugou, who only laughed at their anger. “I’m aiming for U.A.! I won’t waste my time listening to you nobodies!” 

“The national school?”

“They only accept the best.”

“No one’s made it from here.”

Bakugou ignored the students sputtering around the classroom. “I aced the mock exam, I’ve been training for years, and nothing is going to stand between me and surpassing All Might!”

“Oh, you’re also applying to U.A. aren’t you Midoriya?” Silence fell over the room as the students stopped muttering amongst themselves and turned to their classmate. Izuku ignored them all, choosing to continue working on his notes from Mt. Lady’s now infamous debut. “Midoriya, I asked you a question.”

“Yes, Sensei. I plan to take the U.A. exam as well.”

“Is...is that wise?” Izuku stopped writing and finally looked up. Aya was watching him with shifting eyes. They had been friends once, bonding over a shared weak telekinetic quirk. “It's just that..well, they only accept the most...heroic students.” Now she was just another student uncomfortable with Izuku’s very existence.

“”Yeah. I mean, that test is brutal.” 

Ever since his quirk changed when he was four. 

“High school is really stressful.”

And then again at nine.

“Not everyone can handle it.” 

They all thought he was one bad day away from snapping. They all thought he’d become a villain.

A loud boom startled the class. “What is all that shit supposed to mean? Eh?” Bakugou yelled as he slammed his desk, almost as loud as his previous explosion. “Deku’s the only one even close to my level! You extras are just jealous!”

“That’s enough Bakugou,” the teacher cut in. “You can’t destroy another desk like last week. Let’s all get back to the lesson.” His friend tsked, but complied, and all of the other students returned to their seats as well. Izuku met his sensei’s eyes, but the man just turned away. Like always. 

The rest of the day passed like it always did, students and teachers walking on eggshells around Izuku, not willing to outright attack him, but equally unwilling to treat him like he was normal. He ignored them all, but it still hurt, all of these years later. Bakugou was the only one that hadn’t changed over the years, the only one that still thought he could be a hero, even if he was pretty blunt about things.

“You need to learn to defend yourself, nerd.” 

“Defending myself just gets me in trouble.”

“Tch. Do it better then!” 

“Hey Bakugou! Want to head over to the arcade?” Komatsu yelled out over the classroom as everyone started packing up to go home. Izuku himself was still scrolling through the news for any hero fights that he’d missed during the school day. He didn’t snap out of his focus until someone snatched his notebook off his desk. 

“No wonder you were late this morning,” Bakugou said as he flipped through the notebook. 

“Ah Kacchan. I’m not done with that!” Izuku reached for his notes but Bakugou snapped the book shut and held it up high. Izuku could use his quirk to pull it back, but his classmates were all so weird about it. 

“You coming to the arcade with us?” Bakugou was facing him, so he couldn’t see, but Izuku had a clear view of Komatsu and Kenta flinch. They invited Kacchan, not him.

“No, thanks though.” The students’ shoulders fell in relief and Izuku tried not to feel insulted. “I have to head over to the Quirk Registry office today anyway.” The tension in the room immediately shot back up. 

“Oh...did you get another one? Again?” Aya asked. The classroom was silent as students abandoned their packing and instead side-eyed Midoriya. His skin itched at their attention. 

“No, I just need to officially update my registry. I came up with a more accurate description.” Again, the tension suddenly dropped as they all sighed in relief. All but Kacchan, who looked ready to blow something up. 

“Fine,” he tossed the notebook back onto the desk. “We’ll be at Tatooin.” The ‘if you want to catch up’ went unsaid. 

“Thanks Kacchan!” Sometimes Izuku wished he’d actually speak all of the support that went unsaid. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Later Deku.”

Izuku packed up his own desk and left the room. Other students shuffled away from him in the halls, afraid to get near him while also trying to hide that fact. People found his quirk weird, but other than a few incidents years ago, they left him alone.It was almost funny how Bakugou could blow up a desk every week and no one bats an eye. Izuku even looks at too long and they act like he’ll attack.

He tugged on his ears as he hit the streets towards the registrars’ office. His tinnitus was acting up something awful today. His mother worried about the faint whispering and scratching that bothered him intermittently. His pediatrician assured them it was nothing to worry about since it didn’t interfere with his ability to focus, it was just annoying. She’d offered a referral to an otolaryngology office, but specialists were a no-go since the disaster visit when he was four. 

The phantom sounds grew louder in Izuku’s ears as he crossed under the bridge. It was distracting. “A medium-sized body to hide in! How lucky.” 

Izuku’s head shot up as a massive blob of sludge rose out of the sewer grate behind him. He focused on the exit and shifted, his backpack falling straight to the ground and spilling its contents all over the walkway. Izuku reappeared towards the end of the tunnel but hadn’t made it all the way out, his panic was messing with his focus. Slime glomped on his back as the villain grabbed him. “What a nice quirk!” Cold liquid started to climb up his face, blocking his vision. “Calm down, I’m just hijacking your body. It won’t hurt much longer!”

Izuku clawed at the rising goop, but it was no use. There was nothing to pull at, nothing to leverage against. Terror consumed his mind just as the sludge consumed his entire body. He couldn’t see, so he couldn’t shift, and the viscosity of the liquid kept him from just running away. “It’ll all be over soon, just relax.” The villain’s voice crooning right in his ear made his skin crawl even more disgusting than being suffocated. “You’re a real hero, saving my life like this.”

His struggles slowed as Izuku burned through his oxygen. ‘I don’t want to die!’ He could hear his heart pounding, vision fading, and the whispers growing. He couldn’t breathe.

**Don’t let them do this to you**

He didn’t  _ need  _ to breathe.

Izuku's body began to twist and lose shape, but not in time to fight the creeping darkness any longer. He blacked out right as the manhole cover once again exploded behind them. 

“Fear not! I am here!”


	2. Chapter 2

_ The people that come after us will be smarter, stronger, immortal. They can judge us if they want, but they'll know they only exist because of the things we did. _

Toshinori knew he was pathetic. An aging hero, unable to catch a simple purse snatcher. Nabbing this villain wouldn't have even broken a sweat back when he was just a student. In his heyday, he probably wouldn’t have been available to go after such petty crime. Now he was just an old man losing time while astray in a disgusting sewer. ‘Pathetic _. _ ’

The upcoming intersection had a spot of filth on the right passage. He made the turn and hoped it was from the villain and not normal sewer filth . Noises were coming from the grate above. A slam, something falling, a gravelly voice speaking. All Might wasted no more of his rapidly depleting time and leaped right through the manhole. There was the villain, consuming a much smaller form within his disgusting goop. He was too weak, too slow, and now some poor creature was paying the price. ‘Pathetic.’

“Fear not! I am here!” 

It only took one punch to splatter the slime across the tunnel walls. At least he was still capable of this much. All Might looked around, but no other being appeared out of the mess. The whole area was empty except for a lone yellow school bag abandoned on the ground. “You scared off some poor kid, didn’t you villain? Now how to deliver you to the authorities?” His grocery bags clanged together from the tunnel breeze. That gave him an idea. “Hmm...Better than nothing!” All Might stated as he poured out the soda bottles.

All Might could feel his limited time ticking away and quickly shoved the largest globs of sludge he could find into the bottles. “Such a waste.” He left the backpack propped up against the wall. Whatever poor student that had fled would surely come back for it. A tickle in his throat threatened to erupt into a coughing fit. He needed to go, now, before something unfortunate happened. A single powerful leap, and he cleared the surrounding buildings. The tickle grew as the neighborhood shrunk beneath him. He wasn’t going to make it. 

All Might landed hard on the roof with a wheeze as his chest seized and his throat tore open. Coughing on both blood and the odd steam that accompanied his quirk, Toshi knew he’d pushed it too far this time. No medicine or breathing exercises could stop these fits once they got going. There was nothing to do but cough it out. His throat was ragged, his chest ached, and his side pulsed with pain. The very air he needed for survival was now killing him. A bitter old man betrayed by his broken body, held hostage in a cage of injury and agony. ‘So damn  _ pathetic _ .’

After a time the hacking slowed and Toshinori could finally catch his breath. He felt absolutely wiped and couldn’t wait to crawl home to collapse in bed. “I still have to introduce you to my friends on the police force.” He stood, carefully stretching out his chest and arms, letting his diaphragm do the work to expand his lungs. With a sigh, he dropped his arms to pat down his pockets. His empty pockets. 

An explosion ripped through the air. “Oh no…”

——————————

Izuku woke to darkness. Perception of both time and physical surroundings were always a bit odd in this form, but he was sure it wasn’t late enough to be so dark. He twitched a limb and was met with resistance, like trying to swim through thick muddy water. Sudden outside movement slammed him against a smooth wall. Izuku lurched himself away, trying to find an escape from whatever was going on.He hit another wall. And then a solid, sloping floor. Another identical ceiling. He threw all of his limbs wide, searching for any way out. Cylindrical walls surrounded him. ‘No...no no no! Not again!’

He was trapped. Again.   
He was alone. Again.   
In the dark. Again.   
Locked in an inescapable prison. Again.   
The Black  **called.**

‘I’m just hijacking your body. It won’t hurt much longer!’

Izuku thrashed in panic from both the reminder of Sludge Villain’s words and the memory of the  _ incident  _ that happened five year ago. It consumed all logical thought. He threw himself against the wall, and then back across the other side. He battered the walls with all of his strength without thinking, just repeatedly slamming into whatever surface he could reach. The internal momentum changed, interrupting his mania. The top became the bottom, and then back again, twisting and turning repeatedly. Izuku was left disoriented in the sloshing surroundings.

The prison slammed into something and then shot back up. Another slam came from the opposite side, and then again. Izuku was thrown from side to side, up and down, over and over again. He would have definitely been bruised and concussed if it was possible. Finally, the walls of the prison were unable to withstand the constantly changing pressure and cracked open. He was free!

Izuku forced himself through the hole in the wall and skittered away on all four limbs. He shook from fear and disorientation, unable to focus on anything but getting away. Away from the sludge drowning him. He hit the wall of an alley but didn’t stop, using the momentum to bounce off and keep going. Away from the dark prison trapping him. Izuku scrambled from alley to alley, slamming through piles of trash without a thought. Away from the voices, the whispers, the tests. 

Instinct screamed from the deep, to mimic, to hide, to fight. Izuku ignored them all and simply fled. Kept running, crashing, bouncing, anything to get away from his prison. 

Until a very familiar explosion ripped through the air. ‘Kacchan?’ The ground shook as a group of people ran passed the alleyway. Another explosion echoed from several streets over. Izuku released the hold on his form. Black static overtook rippling limbs, growing larger and larger until the small spider-like blob reformed into the fourteen year old high schooler. 

“Kacchan?!” He ran for the street. The light blinded him, but Izuku kept running towards the trouble with the same fervor he had fled just moments before. A crowd blocked off a shopping district, held back by a line of sidekicks as smoke billowed out of the street. 

Izuku joined the crowd, but couldn’t make much of the situation. He turned to the man standing beside him. “What’s going on?”

“Seems like a villain grabbed some poor middle schooler.” The crowd of people were rowdy, yelling out at the heroes in the middle of the action and each other in the group.

“They’re all just standing there.”

“I think All Might was chasing him earlier.”

“What? All Might?! Where is he then?”

“They can’t touch the guy. They need the right quirk!” 

Izuku mostly ignored the rambling as he pushed his way through. Finally, he caught sight of the villain and gasped in shock. The same sludge that had tried to smother him, now had another victim in his grasp. Pro Hero Death Arms attacked, but an explosion pushed him back towards the gathered crowd.

“That poor kid.”

“We’ll focus on damage control!”

“Someone will come to fix it!”

The line of heroes parted as a particularly strong explosion flung shrapnel down the street. This meant Izuku got a clear view of the victim; a clear view of Katsuki’s eyes pleading for help as he suffocated to death. He  _ shifted _ without thinking, reappearing past the line of sidekicks keeping civilians back and running straight for the villain.

“Get back here kid!”

“Does he have a death wish?”

“Time for round two? I’ll kill you for real this time!” 

Izuku ignored everything, hero and villain, but his own instincts. Run.  _ Shift _ . Distract.  _ Pull _ . He  _ shifted _ right by the villain’s outstretched arm and reappeared behind him. “Hey idiot!” The Sludge Villain turned and threw out another glob of disgusting goo. Izuku  _ shifted _ again, back closer to the heroes this time. “You’re as slow as you are stupid!” A scream of pure rage and another wave of slime was his only answer. Izuku was faster though,  _ shifting _ behind him yet again. 

His plan was working. As Izuku kept egging him on, more and more gunk was coming after him each time. With one more  _ shift _ , Kacchan’s face and torso were clear. Izuku  _ pulled _ , using his Remote Manipulation on Bakugou’s uniform to yank his friend’s arms out of the muck.”Kacchan! Go for the eyes!”

“No shit Deku!” Bakugou reached back and fired point-blank into the villain’s exposed eyes. Between the force of the blast, Izuku’s  _ pull _ , and the villain's moment of pained shock, Bakugou was torn free. The two students slammed into each other and fell into a gross puddle as the villain reformed his body. 

“You stupid kids! Stop getting in my way!” He rose, expanding into a tsunami of disgusting filth. Izuku and Bakugou had no time to react to their impending doom. 

A massive hand came out of nowhere and grabbed hold of their arms. “DETROIT SMASH!”

——————————

All Might stood tall amongst the cheering crowd, a symbol of absolute strength and reliability. The gentle rain was successfully putting out the fires. The other heroes were working together to collect the puddles of villain scattered about the street. Paramedics were checking on the two brave children that had fought so hard. All was well. 

His chest ached, his side was absolute agony, and his quirk was slipping like sand through his fingers. ‘Pathetic.’ He had been standing in the back, unable to act as a child struggled to survive. ‘Useless.’ He had just stood there as another child ran in to help, while all of the so-called pros did nothing. ‘Coward.’

A hero should always be ready to risk their life. He was just a dying old man, clinging to a past, to a power, that he was no longer worthy of. Toshi looked over to the kids again. The smaller one was being scolded by several heroes that were on the scene; that wouldn’t do. He smiled at the reporters and started moving towards the group, he’d very calmly thank the boy for the help but also stress the importance of staying safe. Before he could get closer though, the blond interrupted, pushing past the adults to grab the other kid. He began to drag the other off while snarling back at the group behind him.

Toshi knew those two would be great.

His phone rang, pulling his attention away. He waved goodbye to the reporters still surrounding him and leaped. He managed to clear half a block before he dropped his form with a wet cough. His phone was still ringing. After a moment, he had gathered enough strength to answer. “Mirai! Hello! No, I didn’t forget, just running a bit late. I can still make our appointment.”

——————————

“Well? Where is it?”

“Somewhere around here, I’m sure of it.”

After Bakugou had busted through the ring of heroes that were chewing Izuku out for jumping into an active villain fight, he dragged them both down the street towards home. Halfway there, Izuku finally remembered his backpack left abandoned in the tunnel walkway. Bakugou begrudgingly followed him back, unwilling to let him out of his sight and equally unwilling to admit this fact.

“How’d you end up Tatooin so quick from all the way over here?”

“No idea.” He would  _ not _ be revisiting that again. It would only make him worry, make his mom worry, make everyone worry all over again, just like before. His mom wouldn't let him leave her sight for months, he barely survived house arrest at ten, he definitely couldn't handle it at fourteen. 

“What?” 

'Time to distract.' “I don’t know. Got attacked by that slime, woke up somewhere else, and ran around until I heard your quirk.”

“Speaking of, I didn’t need your help!”

Izuku could feel the heat of Bakugou glaring at him. “You were suffocating.”

“I was not! I had that fucker on the ropes! I was just waiting for the perfect moment to kick his ass!” 

“Sure you were.”

Bakugou grabbed at his arm, but Izuku dodged easily enough. “You didn’t do anything!”

“Of course not, I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t you dare mock me!” Another grab, another dodge. They'd been friends since before they could even talk. Midoriya could dodge Bakugou with his eyes closed. 

“I would never, Kacchan.”

“Hah?!”

“Look! There it is!” Izuku ran towards the tunnel, ignoring the apprehension slowly creeping up at the sight of dried filth splattered on the walls. His yellow backpack stood out glaringly bright in the low light of dusk. The bag was slumped against the wall, contents strewn about around it. Izuku quickly scooped books and papers up off the ground and shoving them haphazardly into the bag. 

One item was noticeably absent. “My hero analysis notebook is missing!”

Bakugou scoffed, but didn't move from where he was keeping watch at the mouth of the tunnel. “It’s been hours, probably just blew away or some shit.”

“All of my work though! Missing!”

“Notebooks don’t go missing, they get lost. Why would someone steal your shitty notes?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you haven't read them, this chapter mentions things that happened in previous fics in the series.

_ You are the ones to be congratulated. You are the ones that made this all possible. _

Izuku’s quirk came in at six months old. First named Small Object Manipulation, he could control any light item within his eyesight. As a baby, his quirk was limited to things less than a pound and a few feet in front of his face. Inko, with her own Small Object Attraction, would often hold aerial battles over lotion bottles and Izuku’s favorite plush All Might doll. Inko would  _ attract _ something towards her and Izuku would  _ pull _ it towards himself. 

As he grew up, his weight limit increased from cloth toys to play blocks to reading books. He could  _ pull _ any of his school supplies by kindergarten. At the age of seven, Izuku could often be found in the kitchen,  _ pulling _ heavier objects like flour and rice from the cabinets for his mother cooking dinner. 

Mimic came in at four years old, like any other quirk. Komatsu and Kacchan were playing ball during recess. Izuku had been playing tag with Aya, but she wanted to play with the ball as well. The boys wouldn’t share, Aya wouldn’t stop crying, and the answer was so simple to Izuku. They simply needed two balls. Without any more thoughts beyond needing two balls, needing to be the ball, his body  _ changed _ . Izuku vanished in a burst of black static and twisting limbs. Aya screamed, the teacher came running, and the class rioted over the Midoriya kid suddenly changing shape, changing quirk. 

He kept it super duper secret from his mom for all of a day, before getting caught as a stool while playing hide and seek. Inko panicked when she couldn’t find him and Izuku lost his form at the sight of her tears. The subsequent visit to a quirk specialist set the neighborhood on fire. Dr. Tsubasa’s report of Fictitious Quirk Imposed on Another and the following investigation into Inko’s mental health and fitness to be a parent dogged the family for years. Izuku rarely used Mimic outside of the safety of their apartment, even as the local gossip moved on to other newer topics.

The less said about the awakening of Shift, the better.

In the aftermath of those missing nine days, Izuku found that he couldn’t refuse to use Shift. He’d want to grab a snack from the kitchen and suddenly slam into the wall. He would be walking down the front hall and stumble over the kotatsu as he shot forward several feet. He couldn’t control the teleportation at all and was frequently left bruised and battered. 

It was Kacchan that finally helped him understand. His friend refused to let him ignore the danger of an uncontrollable quirk. “What if you teleport straight into traffic, idiot?!” The Bakugou house had large enough gardens for Izuku to practice control and Kacchan refused to let him leave without some kind of progress. Several broken hedges and hours later, Izuku had a breakthrough. He  _ shifted _ by focusing on a location and truly wanting to be there. 

After learning to simply not do that, Izuku rarely used Shift. At home, it reminded his mom of events everyone would just rather forget. At school, it reminded his classmates of how different and weird and  **wrong** his quirk was. How  **wrong** he was. So Izuku went years without practicing any part of his quirk. 

The situation with the Sludge Villain left Izuku confused. He  _ pulled  _ Bakugou's uniform with much more force than he was capable of as a kid. He had held his  _ mimic  _ for an unknown length of time. He was able to rapidly  _ shift  _ back to back without misstepping. Back at home after collecting his backpack, Izuku came to a realization:

"I don't know what I can do."

"Hm? You say something?" He jumped, startled, and looked over to his mom. Dinner, they were eating dinner when he'd gotten caught up in his own twisting thoughts. 

"I don't know my limits anymore."

Inko only looked at him confused. "Curfew is at nine?"

"What?" He stared back at her, equally confused.

"Curfew is nine, in your room by ten, and bed by eleven." When he continued to just stare, she put down her chopsticks and reached across the table to take his hand. "Honey, are you sure you're okay?

Izuku’s brain finally clicked into gear and he rushed to reassure his mom. “No no no, I’m fine!” His other hand ruffled through his curls as he smiled at her. “Don’t worry about me, just got lost in thought.” 

She didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?”

“Yup!” To prove it, he took a large bite of his dinner—

“Izu...did something happen today?”

—and promptly choked on it. After a coughing fit, and a fit of nerves for Inko, Izuku could finally answer her with a smile, real this time. “I was a hero today.”

———————

Quirk training gyms were out. All of them required that he disclose his quirk to be allowed to practice with the facilities, which never went well for him. No one likes to hear about his weird quirk. Also, no one likes to hear he doesn’t know the limits of his weird quirk. They probably couldn’t afford the membership fees. Definitely couldn’t afford the Exploratory Quirk Usage Insurance Policy that’s mandatory for situations like his. 

Using his school’s PE class or finding a public park to practice were both impossible. One would only lead to more unease at school while the other was literally illegal. Equally unacceptable outcomes. Totally equitable. 

Izuku was stuck, and had been for months. He was unable to get anywhere close to understanding the limits of his quirk so he can make a plan for the U.A. Entrance Exam. And he won’t pass without a plan. And if he doesn’t pass, he won’t get in, and if he doesn’t get in, he can’t be a hero, and if he isn’t a hero then he won’t be able to find—

A loud crunch of metal interrupted his anxious muttering. Izuku looked around, unclear where he’d wandered off to while he wasn’t paying attention. The towering piles of metal scrap and refuse of Takoba Municipal Beach Park greeted him. Izuku jumped as another crashing noise echoed through the stacks. 

“Hello? Is anyone there?” The beach was silent, not even seagulls attempted to live amongst all of the garbage. When he got no response, Izuku dropped his bag on the side of the walkway and entered the park. It was an absolute maze. Meandering pathways lined with broken appliances criss crossed each other randomly, some with dead ends, while others seemed to go on forever down the length of the beach. 

Izuku clambered over a broken bed and stood in a cleared section of sand. Crumbling walls of mismatched metal and concrete tetrapods surrounded one part of the clearing. “Hello?”

“Hi,” a jovial voice came from below. He looked down to see a smiling face in the sand next to his feet. The face slowly vanished into the beach as Izuku began to question his sanity. Movement on his right snapped his attention to the same face emerging from a wrecked refrigerator. They smiled wide at him. “Hey! Whatcha doin’?”

Izuku turned and  _ shifted, _ reappearing on the other side of the clearing, as far from the odd sight as he could get. A hand clamped down on his shoulder and Izuku instinctually  _ shifted _ again, but ran into a low table that was missing a leg in his shock and tumbled down into the sand.

Before he could scramble up, a large blond teen stood over him, blocking out the sun. “Sorry, my bad!” He pulled Izuku up off the ground and then continued to raise him up higher until green eyes met blue. “Though I  **was** kind of hoping to scare you a bit there!”

“Why…?” Izuku mumbled out as his feet dangled in the air.

“Why?” The teen smiled so bright, it was a bit hard to look at. “I thought a sudden entrance would get a laugh!”

“Why are you so tall?” The other only laughed out loud as he continued to hold Izuku half a foot off the ground.

“You’re real funny kid! You should meet my teacher, he’s much taller than me.”

“Just… _why_?” More loud laughter, but he finally set Izuku down and stepped back.

“Soooo….whatcha doing here?”

“I was just walking by and heard some weird noises,” he answered and he tried to shake sand out of his hair. 

“So you came over to check?” He smiled wide again. “That’s quite brave of you!”

“No, I just...never mind.” Izuku stopped messing with his hair and looked back over to the teen. “What are you doing out here?”

“Training!” He posed, showing off the muscles in his arms. “My quirk recently changed and I need to work more on my control. So I’m cleaning this beach!” He gestured widely around at the trash. “Strength training, quirk training, and community service all in one!” 

Izuku perked up. “What’s your quirk?!”

“Permeation! I pass through anything and everything. Even the ground itself!” He walked over to the edge of rubbish and held a hand up against the refrigerator. His arm sunk in up to his shoulder. Izuku wished he had brought his bag and notebook in with him.

“That’s so cool and flexible! Like a glitching video game.”

“Hahaha, you could say that!” He pulled his arm back through and flexed his wrist.

“You said it changed?” ‘Changed like mine?’

The other nodded and his smile dimmed. “You weren’t wrong to call it a glitch. My quirk allows me to pass through anything, like I said. But recently, sometimes, it just...doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t? Like it won’t activate?”

“No.” His smile fell from mirth to resignation. “More like it refuses.”

“I...I don’t understand?” Even if his quirk was odd, it never  _ refused  _ to work. Turning it off was a much bigger problem for Izuku. 

“Just watch.” He walked away from the appliance and towards some bit of a concrete wall. “Sometimes it works,” his fist phased through and after a second he pulled it back out. “And then sometimes, it  **refuses** .” He punched forward and with a loud echoing crash, the entire wall crumbled into dust. Izuku could only stare in shock as his hair and clothes were whipped around by the wind caused by his punch. “I can’t be a hero if I break walls instead of going through them.”

A lightbulb went off in his mind. “Wait...permeation...hero...You’re Mirio Togata! I remember you from this year’s Sports Festival!”

Togata laughed and smiled; it was his turn to mess with his hair in embarrassment. “I was pretty unimpressive.”

“But you were really memorable!” 

“Nudity on international television probably isn’t something I want to be remembered for.” Something changed in the air as Togata’s face fell. “I have to get control over this. My teacher wants to advance my training, to predict opponents’ moves, to move faster than my surroundings can change, to trick time itself!”

Standing there, watching Togata’s passionate speech while the setting sun glinted off his bright hair, Izuku saw the other as more than a second year high schooler. He was a Pro Hero in the making. And everything he himself wanted to be. “Let me train here too!”

Togata perked up. “Huh? What are you training for?” 

“My quirk is...odd. No one really likes when I bring it up, so I’ve kind of...didn’t use it? For years?” He ignored the other’s surprised look and plowed through the rest of it. “I don’t know what it’s capable of and I want to be a hero  _ so bad _ and I need to pass the U.A. exam but my quirk is geared towards reconnaissance and not combat it we can’t afford a gym and saving people is just about the best thing someone can do and—“

“Hey, hey, hey! Take a breath!” Togata, who had moved closer while Izuku was ranting, took him up by the shoulders and shook him lightly. “Technically I can’t give you permission to use your quirk here unsupervised.” Izuku’s face fell. “Buuuut...if you were very careful,” he leaned forward and whispered, “no one would find out.”

“I can be careful! And sneaky!”

“And you have to help me clean the beach! Heroism is also about volunteer work!” Togata crossed the clearing and put his hands down on the large refrigerator. “Together we can bring back this beautiful ocean view!” And then completely fell through the ground, leaving a pile of clothes in the sand.

———————

Izuku found training on the beach extremely rewarding. Everyday, he would rush away from school, change clothes in a nearby convenience store, and head to the beach. His mother had worried about his sudden change in routine and pestered Katsuki into following him one day, which he grudgingly agreed to simply because the gym was closed that day. He didn't care where his friend spent his time. Nope. Not at all. Bakugo took one look at the trash beach, yelled "Oh hell no!" and left before the stench could cling to his clothes.

Day by day, week by week, months passed and the beach slowly became habitable again. Midoriya managed to drag his friend back to his "community service project" once the piles of garbage had been cleared out and only hulking appliances remained. They jutted out of the sand like mountains. Bakugou was more than willing to test his mettle against the metal and completely obliterated them into scrap.

Mirio-sempai, who had pressured Izuku to call him by his given name by the second day, would join him on the beach between school and working at his internship. On days he was free, they’d spend half of their time cleaning the sands and the other half developing their quirks.

Izuku practiced Remote Manipulation on bits of scrap and trash,  _ pulling _ them out of the sand in order to properly dispose of them. This was the first limit he discovered. He could only manipulate an object within 10 meters and about 20 pounds. Any heavier objects caused him immense headaches. 

To better understand Mimic and Shift, their "training" consisted of an overly complicated game of hide and seek. Izuku would attempt to evade Mirio by changing form into some bit of garbage while the other tried to find him. In the beginning, Izuku was able to really test out the strength of his  _ mimic _ , staying hidden far longer than Mirio was willing to keep seeking him out. Moving while holding his shape took much more effort, but standing still in place? Effortless. Three months in however, the older teen began to be able to pick him out of the other broken appliances. He refused to share his secret beyond "just a feeling."

Once he was caught, Togata would give chase. Between Shift and Permeation, they could both run freely around the slowly shrinking piles of refuse that clogged the beach. Izuku could run like this, back to back  _ shifts _ , as fast as his eyes could focus on where to go. Shadowy clones made of static stood eerily on the sand behind him. They had tripped Mirio up only once before he figured out they were just another part of Izuku’s odd quirk.

When he finally caught up with him, Izuku took up the chase as he sunk down into the sand. Mirio was working on his own form of warping: dropping through the ground and deactivating it to shoot out of the ground in a direction. Controlling said direction and intuiting what power was needed each time took up the majority of his training. 

Their chase continued on throughout the days, both losing focus on everything but using their quirks to catch the other. Izuku was gaining ground on the blond. The beach was completely clear, leaving nothing to block his view and allowing Izuku to go farther and farther distances each time. Just as he was closing in— Just one more  _ shift _ !"--a wall of blue suddenly appeared in front of him. Izuku went tumbling into the sand in a tangle of limbs and a shout. 

Mind spinning from both the impact and a very strong sense of dejavu, Izuku looked up at the man he'd run into. Then up and up and up until he finally got to the stranger's face. It was partially blocked by a large scarf he was using to catch a cough. "Are," the man choked on a weeze. "Are you okay kid?" 

"Why are you so tall?" Izuku replied, still stunned on the ground. A loud guffaw answered him and Togata joined the group.

"Does this happen every single time you meet someone?" he asked as he reached a hand down.

"Huh?" Izuku blinked at him before taking his hand and scrambling up. "What? No! You're both just," he looked between the two, both blond, blue-eyed, and  _ so freaking tall _ , "very similar!"

Togata just laughed at him but the older man looked between them, concerned. "I thought you were being attacked, Young Togata." The older teen started shaking his head vigorously. "I see now that I was wrong. But what were you doing?" 

"Training!" Mirio slapped an arm around Izuku’s shoulders. "This kid's quirk is amazingly versatile! We've been practicing here for the last six months or so." He ignored Midoriya's frantic gestures as he casually spilled about their illegal quirk use. "In fact, he's been helping me clear the beach when I'm busy with school!"

"Oh really?" Piercing blue eyes pinned Midoriya in place. "That's quite heroic of you. Most people ignored this place." 

"T-thank you," he paused, trying to remember if Mirio had ever talked about someone like this. Was he the super tall teacher he mentioned? He looked oddly familiar. 

"My bad!" Togata yelled with a chuckle. "This is my uncle. He's the one that suggested using this beach as a training spot." The sickly looking man choked on a cough for a moment and then chuckled, looking embarrassed. Izuku could definitely see the family resemblance. "Actually, I'm glad you stopped by! Wanted to introduce you to my future undergrad before tomorrow."

Izuku looked at him in confusion. "Tomorrow? What's tomorrow?"

"How hard did you hit your head Mido?" He sputtered at both the nickname and the insinuation that he was injured. "Tomorrow is the U.A. Entrance Exam." Izuku froze. Mirio just tilted his head to the side with a wide grin. "Did you forget?"

"Shit!" In a blur of purplish static, Izuku was gone, replaced by a shadowy duplicate as he  _ shifted _ away. Togata's loud laughter mixed with Yagi's quiet chuckle as the two watched the teen run back home.

"He'll make a pretty excitable first year!"

"I worry for Aizawa’s sanity if he passes. I'll have to keep an eye on him tomorrow. Kids like that are always trouble." 

" _ When _ he passes." Mirio looked over at his 'uncle' with a familiar glint in his eye. "I bet Sir is going to like him…"

Toshinori stood on the beach and admired the crystal clear water and shimmering sand. He was reminded of his thoughts almost a year ago: that kid would be great. And he couldn't wait to watch it happen.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chap yet, references previous stories in the series.

_Once you start the test, just do whatever feels natural._

He was dreaming. 

_Don’t overthink it._

He floated in space, spinning in darkness without care. Something called out to him, crying for help. It pulled him away from the comforting **Black** and into sterile white light. Cut off and alone. The brightness blinded him. It hurt. He floated, in pain and alone, while the cry for help continued to echo through his mind. 

_D̶̢͓̥̻̓̃̚͠͠r̴͓͙̅̄͆͝.̸̦͒̅́̑͠ ̴̫͎̲̔͊͗B̵̞͙̤̈́̋͗ê̸̛̯̬̼͠l̷̡̧̧̛̫͐̓ͅl̷̤͖̪̩͐͌͜ǎ̴̫͎̐m̶̻̣͐͊̋̓͠y̶̡͔͖̆̓̂̕͜ is going to walk you through the process._

He twisted, trying to move, trying to reach out to them. The cry grew weaker. Pain spread through his limbs, growing unbearable. The call fizzled out into indistinguishable whispers as the light consumed all. 

_You’re in good hands._

Izuku startled awake as a pillow hit him in the face. He groaned and rolled over, right as Bakugo yanked the futon out from under him. The extra push caused Izuku to continue his roll until he hit the dresser with an oof. 

“Wake up Deku! You’re gonna make us late!”

Izuku reached around for his blanket and pulled it over his head. “It’s too early for you to be this loud.”

“Loud?!” Bakugo snarled. “I’ll fuckin’ show you loud!” 

“Oi brats!” Both boys flinched as Mitsuki’s bombastic voice came from downstairs. “You’re gonna be late! Get your asses down here.”

“Stop yelling hag!” 

“Oh I haven’t even started yelling yet!” 

Izuku finally pulled himself up as the two continued their overly loud banter through the floorboards. He got dressed once his friend stomped out of the room to go yell at her in person. He grabbed his phone from the charger and smiled at the voicemail notification. 

“Oh Izu baby, I’m sorry I can’t be there this morning to see you off. Good luck on your exam! I’m sure you’re going to be amazing. Just...just please be careful honey. And remember, your father and I are always with you. We love you.”

His mom’s encouragement kept him smiling through the very loud conversation over the breakfast table. There were never any quiet meals in the Bakugo household. 

“Grab another okonomiyaki, you’ll need the nitrates.”

“I know!”

“Also these beets.”

“Stop shoving food at me!”

“Well sorry for trying to make sure you’re fed.”

“I can feed myself!”

Izuku shared a conspiring look with Masaru over the bowls being shoved violently across the table. “Good morning.” He grabbed the plate of food the two were fighting over and began to eat. Mitsuki and Kacchan didn’t even pause for breath.

“Good morning Izuku. Sleep well?”

“Yup!”

“Hah?!” Katsuki butt in. “Sleep well? You wouldn’t stop twitching and interrupting my own rest!”

Mitsuki finally abandoned stuffing her kid until he—literally and figuratively—exploded. She turned her attention to Izuku. “Have a bad dream kiddo?”

Izuku just blinked at her. “I don’t think so…” He turned to his friend. “Is that why you tried to smother me this morning Kacchan?”

“What?!” Mitsuki’s head snapped back around to her son, who glared at Izuku. “How many times have I told you to stop trying to kill guests?” Katsuki’s eyes promised revenge.

“You boys should get going.” Masaru cut in before her rant could build up steam. 

“Fine!”

“You’re probably right.”

After a rush to clear their dishes and gather up their bags, the two boys were ready to leave. Mitsuki took her time saying goodbye and good luck in her own lovingly loud way. Katsuki bore it while looking like he’d rather commit murder. Masaru watched his two living explosives with a soft smile. Izuku turned to him and bowed. 

“Thanks for having me over since Mom got called in.”

“You’re always welcome here.” Masaru smiled again. “I practically have two sons.”

With a loud growl of frustration, Katsuki tore himself out of his mother’s hold and grabbed Izuku, dragging him out the door. He reached back and waved to the adults. “Bye! Thanks again!”

“Stop encouraging them!”

Izuku stumbled as his friend let him go, but didn’t fall. “You parents are great. I love them.” 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” 

The trip to U.A. was quiet. ‘We love you.’ Izuku focused on his mom’s message as he walked. Warmth filled his chest, ‘your father and I are always with you.’ He was nervous about the exam. He had to pass. He had to be a hero. ‘You’re going to be amazing.’

“Hey isn’t that those kids from the Sludge Incident?” Izuku startled out of his thoughts by Kacchan growling next to him. A group of students stood between them and the entrance, eyeing them as they walked up. 

Bakugo stomped up to them with a snarl. “Get out of my way or you're dead.” The group scattered, jumpin out of the way as he pushed through. Izuku stopped to try apologizing for him, but stumbled when Katsuki yanked on his backpack. “Come on nerd.”

“Coming.” He turned around to continue walking and crossed the infamous U.A. Barrier. The sun glinted harshly off the towering buildings and Izuku was struck with the thought that it was finally happening. ‘I can do this!’ Ten months of training with Mirio wouldn’t be for nothing. ‘My first steps towards becoming a hero!’ Of course immediately after thinking these words, Izuku tripped and fell flat on his face. He stayed down for a moment, contemplating why this was his life while Bakugo cackled above him.

“Are you okay?” Izuku rolled over at a voice he didn’t recognize. A bubbly brunette leaned over him, blocking out the sun. She reached down. “Sorry for not stopping your fall.” Izuku took her hand and instantly started to float upwards. “I thought your friend here would catch you first.”

Bakugo’s smirk was sharp. “Wouldn’t want to _smother_ you again.”

Izuku was too busy reveling in the feeling of weightlessness to respond. The girl huffed at Bakugo as she straightened him out. “Not very heroic of you.”

“Hah?! Say that again Round Face?”

“Rude!” She set him down and clapped her hands together. Gravity returned to him and Izuku stumbled with a strange sense of longing. “It’s a bad omen to trip and fall but I’m sure you’ll do great.” She smiled at him, met Bakugo’s glare with one of her own, and then left for the doors. 

“Tch. Come on already, stop making me repeat myself!” Izuku jerked back into full awareness and followed, shaking off the odd sensation of weightlessness.

They continued through the doors to check-in, got their information packets from the desk, and followed pointed signs to a massive auditorium. Murmurs followed them down the halls, but no one seemed brave enough to bring up the Sludge Villain again.

“Welcome to today’s live performance!” An equally loud and cheerful voice cut through the low buzz of the crowd. “Can I get a HEY!?”

Izuku sucked in an excited breath but a hand clamped over his mouth before he could yell. “Don’t,” Bakugo hissed without even turning his head. Izuku pulled at his impromptu gag, but he didn’t let go until the announcer continued after the awkward pause.

“Well, that’s cool, my little examinees! I’m here to present the Practical Exam guidelines. Everybody ready?!” 

Izuku twitched excitedly in his seat, oblivious to his neighbors’ glares. “That’s The Voice Hero: Present Mic!”

“I know.”

“Pro hero, radio host, _and_ teacher. It’s so impressive!”

“Shuddup already.”

“This is all so cool!”

They continued whispering back and forth throughout the presentation. Izuku geeked out over the pro hero while Katsuki attempted to focus on the instructions.

“Aren’t you excited Kacchan? So many people with so many different quirks!”

“I’m going to crush them all.”

“Attacking other examinees is strictly prohibited, of course. And grounds for dismissal from the test and your application trashed! So be careful listeners!” 

“I think he heard you,” Izuku said with a giggle. His friend merely glared at him.

“—And you! With the curly hair!” Izuku started as a serious-looking kid stood tall above the crowd and pointed at him accusingly. “You’ve been distracting us all with your constant muttering. Take this seriously or leave!” 

He shrunk in his seat as the stranger ranted at him. “Sorry…”

Present Mic interrupted the blue-haired teen when he took a breath to keep going. “Alright, alright, Examinee 7111. I did say attacking other examinees is a no-go.” The room around them chuckled at Izuku’s expense. He scooted down as far as possible, but his skin itched with the weight of eyes on him. A pen slid into his one of sight and he quickly _mimicked_ , causing more murmurs around them as he vanished.

“As for your question,” Present Mic continued, “the last villain variety is just an obstacle. It’ll grant you a big fat zero to your score. But don’t worry your little heads! There’s only one at each site, rampaging around in close quarters.”

“Thank you sir.” He bowed. “I apologize for the interruption.

“Well that’s all from me! I’ll leave you all with our school motto: PLUS ULTRA!”

Izuku stayed _mimicked_ while the room started to clear. Bakugo waited a few minutes, but quickly grew aggravated with the shoving. He snatched up his friend and forced a path through. Once they came across a clear space, he threw the pen in his hand at a wall, and cackled as Izuku bounced off. He let go of the form and skidded to a halt before he hit another wall.

“Kacchan why…” he whined as he got up and dusted himself off. 

“One of these days you’re gonna have to defend yourself from assholes like that.”

“You’re an asshole and I defend myself from you.”

“No, you just sic my mom on my ass!”

“Same difference!”

They rejoined the much more diminished crowd of perspective students. Everyone was being herded into changing rooms and out through a side entryway. Older students were helping to keep people moving and on track. One student with long periwinkle hair was floating up high, directing prospective students into various lines in front of buses. Izuku sputtered as she caught sight of him and began waving wildly.

“Who the fuck?”

“No idea.”

They got to the lines without issue and looked at each other for a moment. Bakugo broke the silence. “Don’t fuck up Deku. I won’t be there to save your ass this time.”

Izuku smiled wide at him. “Good luck Kacchan!” He split off with a grunt of acknowledgement. The bus ride to the testing site passed in a blur of awe at the expansive U.A. grounds mixed with his own anxiety. He stumbled out of the vehicle and joined the group staring at the gate before them.

“So big…”

“Like a whole city!”

“This place is really something else.”

Movement caught his attention and Midoriya turned to see the brunette from earlier waving at him. He raised his arm to wave back when a hand grabbed his shoulder. Izuku jumped, he was never good at handling attention. He turned to see Examinee 7111, who had chewed him out before.

“Are you here to distract everyone again?”

“Distract? N-no?” The crowd started buzzing around them. Izuku could feel the weight of their attention on his skin.

“And...Begin!” The tall teen stumbled as a wave of confusion rippled through the air. Everyone turned to the tower that stood high over the exam sites. Present Mic stood on top. “What’s wrong? The die has been cast! The Exam! Has! Begun!” 

The group surged, but it didn’t matter. Izuku was already long gone. 

———————

Aizawa took a sip of his coffee and sighed in anticipation of the caffeine. What sweet relief in an oasis of stupidity. The other teachers were scattered about the observation room, staring up at the screens and marking points. Aizawa had lost his scoring privileges last year.

He’d rather violently protested the unfair advantages for flashy physical quirks. And then kicked his whole class from the heroics course. The Board called it an unjust retaliation. Nedzu argued that if his actions were ‘unjust,’ it insinuated there was a ‘just’ form of retaliation, therefore suggesting there was actually something needing retaliation against Aizawa had tuned out most of the argument, but it must have gone well, since he still had his job. 

Either way, jokes on them, he hated scoring the exam anyway. Vlad still flinched whenever he got within throwing distance. ‘As if I’d waste my coffee on the likes of him.’

“Lots of variety this year.”

“Intelligence, mobility, sheer power.”

“Allowing them to play in such a large battlefield without rules. It brings out those that are truly heroic.”

‘Or truly insane.’ Aizawa kept his thoughts to himself. He half-dozed as exam proctors continued to speak up for any interesting moves prospective students made. 

“Bot 122854 seems to be malfunctioning over in Testing Site D,” someone called out over the room.

“Malfunctioning how?” Powerloader asked.

“Seems to be attacking other bots.”

“A technomancy quirk? Or hacking?” 

“Bot 122854 has reported back completely destroyed within the first minute of the exam.” 

“If it was destroyed, how is it attacking?” 

The proctor took a breath to continue arguing, but Nedzu interrupted them. “Why don’t we see for ourselves?” A few taps on his keyboard and the main screen grew bright as one camera feed overtook the others. It showed a two-pointer taking the head off another bot, 122854 painted brightly on the side.

‘That was intentional, not a malfunction,’ Aizawa thought. ‘Finally something interesting was happening.’

A moment later, a blond examinee with a large tail entered into the frame. “Well, at least someone is here to take 854 out. I’ll drag the scrap back to my studio later and figure out what went wrong.” Powerloader sighed in relief. He leaned in as if he could diagnose the issue through the screen. “May make it a senior project.”

The blond kid seemed to be readying an attack but something offscreen caught his attention. He said something unheard by the cameras and froze. Proctors around the room began to talk amongst themselves as the kid turned and just walked away, a vacant look on his face. A purple-haired examinee walked on screen and eyed the bot, which had stayed frozen during the entire exchange.

“That’s gotta count as attacking a fellow examinee, right?”

“Perhaps,” Nedzu had a gleam in his eye that set the room on edge. “Perhaps not.” Aizawa had no sympathy for All Might, who looked uncomfortable in his seat next to the principal. He should have realized the seat was empty for a reason. The bot suddenly moved towards the kid, who didn’t even flinch as it bore down on him.

“Is he brave or stupid?”

“Oh I like them feisty,” Midnight purred.

As the bot got close, the display glitched, static clipping through the image, obscuring parts of the camera feed with noise. As quick as it started, it was gone, and with it the bot. In its place, a green-haired kid continued to rush at the purple one. He was gesticulating wildly with a smile on his face. There was no audio, but the room could practically feel the brightness of his words as he energetically hugged the other kid. 

Aizawa, on the other hand, was frozen in place. His mind snapped back to the last time he saw that face, six years ago. The horrific sight of ridiculously small red shows and a smuggled marker left abandoned in a bare prison cell. The blood, the experiments, the fear in his eyes as he begged to go home. It was difficult to reconcile the broken kid of his nightmares with the smiling one on the screen. Difficult, but he was glad for it. 

Obviously he had made it home, even if Aizawa himself couldn’t fulfill his promise.

The purple-haired examinee was blushing, but seemed to be the only one that remembered they were in an active situation. He tugged at the other’s arm and pointed at a bot coming right for them. The camera focused on the green-haired, green-eyed teen as he leaped forward and swirling static overtook his form. _Something_ slammed the three-pointer into the ground, destroying it instantly. As the dust settled, an identical bot stood over the rubble. The shocked silence of the observation room was broken by the shattering of Aizawa’s coffee mug as it hit the floor. 

“That’s not his quirk!” two voices rang out at the same time.

Aizawa glared at Yagi. "I saved that kid six years ago. He had a manipulation and hallucination quirk strong enough to make a police detective fall unconscious out of sheer fear."

Yagi glared back at him. "Young Midoriya has a short range teleportation quirk. I saw it with my own eyes just yesterday."

"Too many years spent looking at your own reflection in the mirror has permanently damaged your vision."

"Or perhaps too many concussions in back alley brawls has affected your long term memory." 

"Gentlemen," Nedzu cut in, "We are all colleagues here, not enemies. Please save such _entertaining_ conversations for when we are not in the middle of an important exam."

Yagi startled; he'd forgotten where he was. He was the number one hero! He should be above slinging such petty barbs. "My apologies, Nedzu, Eraserhead." Seeing the sweet kid he met yesterday, someone Young Mirio considered a friend, show evidence of having _more than one quirk_ instantly set him on edge. 'He's dead,' Yagi thought. 'He has to be.'

The underground hero scoffed and turned back to the screen. The camera feed was following the copycat bot with the purple-headed kid sitting on the missile cannons. As other examinees ran up to target the not-bot, he’d say something that'd turn them blank just like the tail kid. 

Nedzu's eyes gleamed as he reached for the yaruki switch. "Let's see what these children are really capable of."

The proctors all watched as the massive zero-pointers were released into the testing sites. The completely overwhelming obstacle that forced people to show their true colors. It could make or break their chances at being heroes. 

"Sooo...was anyone actually keeping track of how many bots 122854 took out?" Snipe asked, cutting any and all tension in the room.

———————

**BOOM**

Izuku lost his hold on the faux villain's form as a loud explosion echoed through the air. Shinso, who had been perched on his shoulder keeping students from attacking him, landed on Izuku’s back, pushing the air from his lungs. 'How many times am I going to eat dirt today?' The ground shook and rubble rained from the sky as a truly massive robot tore at buildings boxing it in. 

"We," Izuku coughed, trying to catch his breath, "we have to run."

Shinso groaned and rolled up off Midoriya, clutching his left shoulder. "Yeah. We need to go." There was something angry in his voice.

"You okay?" 

"Must have landed wrong. You're not very comfortable." He reached down with his good arm and yanked him upright. He kept a hold on Midoriya to keep them upright as the shaking of the ground got worse. A building behind them collapsed with another loud boom and rush of air. "Jeez, they're going to kill us."

A low "oww…" caught Midoriya's attention and he turned back to eye the rubble. He jerked Shinso to a stop when he saw the bubbly brunette that was so nice to him earlier. She was trapped underneath a slab of concrete.

"We have to help!" Shinso sighed, but ran back with him. In seconds, they reached the pile of rubble she was struggling to crawl out from under. "Are you okay?"

"My legs pinned," she grunted out with a harsh breath. "I can't—I'm at my limit with my quirk."

"We're here to help!"

Shinso looked over to the rampaging zero-pointer. "Stop talking, we gotta go. Now." They both yanked and pushed at the slab, but it wasn't moving anywhere anytime soon. 

"Okay," Izuku panted, "new plan." He looked between Shinso and the girl, then to the concrete and the bot. "I'll lift from below. Shinso, the second you can, pull her out and run."

"What about you?" 

"I'll catch up." 

"But what—"

"No time! I'll catch up!" Before his eyes, Midoriya _changed_ . Black static started warping the air around him, obscuring his limbs as they bent as if made of rubber, his skin darkening, and his body shrinking and twisting in a truly nauseating way. In a blink, it was over and a small shiny-black _something_ with four tentacles stood right where Midoriya had been. Shinso would almost call them a cute little half spider, in a creepy Lovecraftian way. 

The creature—'That's gotta be Midoriya right?'—crawled underneath the pile of rubble. Several tense moments later, it began to shift up and Shinso pulled as hard as he could with a bum arm. The girl popped free and the concrete slab settled to the ground with a puff of dust. Midoriya was nowhere to be seen. 

"Come on!" Shinso yelled. He pulled her up and threw her arm over his shoulders with a grunt. 

"But what about—"

"He said he'd catch up, let's go!" 

The two stumbled as the ground continued to shake. Present Mic was counting time down in the distance, but they focused on simply making it to the end. Shinso tripped over a piece of rebar and would have face planted if it wasn't for Midoriya, who came out of nowhere to pull him back up. 

"Where did you even come from?" The girl asked, sounding exasperated. 

Midoriya smiled as he took her other arm. "I told you I'd catch up." 

They kept running, dodging falling debris, pulling each other over piles of broken robot bits as the testing site continued to crumble.

"IT'S ALL OVER!!" The group sighed in relief as Present Mic's announcement. The zero-pointer slowed to a stop and shut down, but students still fled from around it. 

"Oh dear, is any one injured?" Shinso turned to see a kindly old lady with a cane hobbling over rubble. 

"That's The Youthful Heroine: Recovery Girl!" Midoriya was vibrating in place. "Her quirk is Super Healing Factor!" 

"Finally this nightmare of a day can end. Let's go." 

They shuffled over to the nurse, who took one look at the group and quickly met them halfway. She smooched all three in rapid succession and passed them a handful of gummy bears. "There you go dearies, good as new." She lightly smacked them on the ankles. "The exam's over, you all go home and get some rest."

All three bowed as one. "Thank you."

They boarded the first available back to the main campus. It was quiet, everyone too exhausted to talk amongst themselves. When they finally returned to the gate, Midoriya was surprised to see how normal the outside world looked. Those ten minutes had felt like an eternity. 

Midoriya stretched, soaking up the sun. He turned to Shinso, who's silence on the trip back seemed more aggravated than exhausted. There was something dark brewing in his eyes. "Thanks for helping me, I couldn't have done it without you."

"It wasn't a big deal, you did the work, I just talked."

"You were amazing!" The brunette cut in, leaping up to shake him by the shoulders. "You saved me."

Shinso blushed. "It was Midoriya that got the rock up, I just—"

"Just carried me out by yourself until he could catch up." 

"Just kept me safe from the other people that thought I was a villain." 

Both of them smiled at Shinso, who continued to blush at the attention. The dark anger still lingered in his eyes though. 

Midoriya frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Look, yeah, it's true I helped you two," he glared between the two of them, "a tiny little bit. But it doesn't matter." 

"What?"

"Of course it matters!"

"It doesn't matter because I didn't get any points!" It seemed to physically pain him to say. "I failed!" Midoriya reached out to grab his new friend, but he smacked his hand away. "Even if I ace the written exam, getting zero points on the Practical is an instant failure!" He turned and fled, one hand scrubbing at the tears starting to cloud his eyes.

Midoriya watched him run away, wishing he could save just one more person today.


	5. Chapter 5

_The truth is....uncomfortable…_

“Come now, Midoriya! This will be your hero academia!” 

Tears were flowing freely down his face, but Izuku didn’t care. He made it! He passed! For so long he’d been ostracized from the other kids his age. He was the class pariah, a weirdo with an even weirder quirk, a missing dad, and a crazy mom. And now he could leave that all behind. He was going to U.A.! 

“Hey Midoriya!” He startled at the shout and looked around; somehow he had ended up at Takoba Municipal Beach. The clean sand spread out before him, water sparkling beautifully in the sunset. Mirio stood down by the water, waving, while his uncle towered beside him. “Come join us!”

Izuku jogged down the steps, forgetting his confusion, and met the older teen’s smile with a beaming one of his own. “I got in!”

“I knew you would!” He held up a hand and Izuku eagerly slapped it.

“Kacchan made it too!”

“That’s just as great!” Mirio said as he raised both hands for a double high-five.

“Congratulations Young Midoriya.” He jumped, in his race to share the news, he’d forgotten the adult standing with them. Mirio’s uncle was looking at him oddly, as if trying to figure something out. 

“Thank you sir.” The man just kept staring, making Izuku’s skin itch. He felt _seen_ and it was _wrong._ “I couldn’t have done it without Mirio’s help.”

“Haha, you’re funny,” the other teen slapped him on the back, making him jump again. “You did all of this on your own!”

The weight of the man’s attention finally eased as he turned towards Mirio. “Remember what we talked about. Feel free to call me anytime.”

“Of course sir,” he said with a more muted smile. “Have a nice night.”

“It should be interesting alright.” He chuckled tiredly before trudging towards the old truck parked nearby. Izuku wasn’t exactly sad to see him go. He turned back to Mirio as the teen sighed and his smile fell. 

“Everything okay?” The look on his face was brittle. Izuku had never seen him like this before.

“Nothing to worry your little head over, I’ve just been a bit stressed. Final exams, extra training, work study, those types of things. “ He sighed and pressed his thumb between his eyebrows. I’ve had a headache for days.”

Izuku frowned. “Anything I can help with?”

Mirio chuckled and started to shake his head, but flinched in pain. “Not unless you could shut my brain off for me.”

Izuku perked up as he got an idea. “I can’t, but I know a place that can!”

“What?” Mirio asked, head cocked to the side in confusion.

“Turn your brain off!” Izuku began pulling the other teen by the arm. “I know a place that can help you.” He dragged him through the side streets of Musutafu until they arrived at a small building. Midoriya pushed through the door with a stylized incense logo on it and entered into a small lobby. An older, dark skinned man stood at the receptionist desk and looked up when they entered. 

“Back again Midoriya? This will be your fourth time this week.” The man had a deep voice and Mirio started to relax, despite his odd accent. 

“Not me this time, but I was hoping for a favor.”

The man’s expression didn’t change, despite Izuku’s strongest puppy eyes. “And what is this favor?”

“Togata-senpai here,” he gestured to the teen behind him, who was looking around the room, “is stressed. He needs to float.”

“I have no issue extending our agreement to your friends.”

“Well you see…” Izuku trailed off, wondering how to word his request. “He already has work studies and school.”

“And can’t pay.” The man eyed the two teens, one begging and one utterly confused. “Fine. But you’re working this weekend.”

“Yes! Thank you!” Izuku dragged the bewildered teen through a pair of double doors at the back of the room. The man just shook his head at the antics of children and returned to his book.

“What is going on?” Mirio finally asked.

“You’re going to float!” 

“And that means what exactly?”

Izuku ignored his question and shoved him into a shower cubicle, throwing a large robe over his face. “Hurry up and wash off, then come out here.” 

Still completely confused, Mirio complied. A few minutes later, he stepped out awkwardly holding his clothes. “Okay, so now what?” Izuku led him over to a large square rectangle. 

“This,” he slapped the door on the front and a hollow clang echoed, “is an isolation tank! It suppresses all five senses and even gravity!”

“Sounds about like when I sink into the ground with my quirk.” 

“Yup!” His smile was bright. “The water is diluted with epsom salt and set to your body temperature. It’s like floating in space! It’s so relaxing.” For just a moment, his eyes unfocused. “The whole world simply vanishes,” he said in a dreamy voice. 

Mirio blinked and the change was gone.

Izuku didn’t give him any time to argue, or even think, before he shoved him into the tank. Mirio leaned back into the water and tried to relax, just accepting that he wouldn’t escape this. Not with Izuku hanging around nearby. There was no light, no sound, only his own thoughts bouncing around his mind. Slowly, the tension in his spine eased as he drifted into a doze. It really was like floating off into space, adrift in pure nothingness.

Lights flickered at the edge of his vision, breaking up the blackness of the tank. The lights grew, not brighter, but closer, swirling around in the darkness. Glittering spirals of stars condensed into eight, vaguely humanoid, shapes that stood over him. Whispers drifted in and out of his ears, rising and falling like tides. One of the sparkling shadows reached down toward Mirio, but he was frozen, locked into place by eight pairs of glowing eyes.

_Do you see us? Really see us?_

———————

All Might had been in plenty of interrogation rooms during his career. Early on, he was often called in to keep villains secure during questioning and booking. Sometimes it was only to serve as intimidation, while others his strength was needed to keep the villain contained. Between his rising position and the development of better restraints, the time spent in police offices dwindled down to nothing. None of those incidents came close to the suffocating weight of Eraserhead’s glare pinning him down in his seat. 

“So glad you finally deigned to meet with us.” Toshinori flinched at his tone. Nedzu was starting his kettle, ignoring the tension between the other two heroes in the conference room. “You are aware that you now have an obligation to this school, correct?”

“Yes, I am aware,” he began. “People needed me.”

“And when we need you here?” He shot back, voice harsh. “A choice between U.A. and the public that’s lifted you up so high? We lose every time.” 

“If it’s another choice between saving a life and a simple meeting, then yes, I will choose to save that life.” 

“Gentlemen, please.” Nedzu interrupted. “Let us finally get started.” Despite his words, no one spoke for several moments. 

“So,” Aizawa finally sighed out. “Spill. What’s your issue with Izuku Midoriya?” All Might sputtered, choked on air, and began coughing violently. Aizawa hid a smirk as Nedzu passed their tea across the table.

“I don’t have an issue with Young Midoriya,” he finally gasped out. 

“Then what is it?”

All Might took a shaky sip of his tea, trying to sooth his ragged throat. “It’s just,” as if trying to word his thoughts correctly. “His quirk. It’s definitely teleportation, not the transformation we saw during the exam.”

“Care to actually explain how you know that?”

He glared at him over his tea cup. “Just that I’ve seen it for myself.”

Aizawa didn’t even flinch, just met the glare with one of his own. “And I’ve seen him create illusions and manipulate fear.” 

“And I,” Nedzu cut in from behind his laptop, “have pulled up the quirk information he submitted with his school application. It doesn’t match his quirk registry.”

“What?!” two voices rang out at the same time.

Aizawa eyed the number one hero for a moment, then turned to the principal. “What does the registry say?”

“Quirk: Small Object Manipulation. Emitter class quirk that allows him to move and control objects within his eyesight.” His eyes gained a worrying gleam. “Oh ho ho, how interesting.”

“What? What is so interesting?”

“It says activated at six months, quite unusual for a mental quirk.”

“Unusual,” Aizawa grunted out, “but not impossible.”

“It seems Midoriya showed signs of another quirk and his mother took him to a specialist at four.”

“Another quirk?” All Might’s voice was weak, his face pale. 

“Yes, Nedzu continued. “The doctor marked him as quirkless, in fact. Stating evidence of a second toe joint. 

All Might looked even more uncomfortable, if possible. “Quirkless?”

“That’s obviously untrue.” Aizawa scoffed. “We’ve all seen that he has a quirk, even if we can’t agree on what it is.”

Nedzu hummed contemplatively as he continued to type on his computer. “This file is partially corrupted, as if someone had attempted to edit. Or delete it."

“Why would someone do that?”

“A better question,” Aizawa interrupted, “is who would have the power to do that.” Alarm bells went off in his head when All Might and Nedzu shared a dark look. “What is it? What are you hiding?”

The other hero smiled weakly, “Nothing! Nothing at all.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said with a glare.

“It’s nothing to worry about. It’s in the past.”

“The past never stays in the past. It always comes back to cause trouble for the present.”

All Might darted his eyes back over to Nedzu, looking for some kind of help in the face of Aizawa’s pushiness. The principal just continued typing away at his laptop. “It’s…classified. It’s _beyond_ classified.”

The other’s glare seemed to double in power. “It must be so easy to look down on the rest of us lowly heroes when you sit so high up on that pedestal you build for yourself.” He plowed through All Might’s sputtering denials. “But this industry _survives_ on the intel gathered by us underground heroes. And I’m one of the best. So if you don’t tell me, right here, right now, I _will_ find out on my own.” He quirked an eyebrow across the table. “And I will be a lot less forgiving of you when I do.”

All Might sighed, leaned his elbows on the table, and bent down to rest his eyes on his palms. “There was a villain,” he started, in a weak voice. “A very, very bad one. He could give and take quirks. And he used this power to rule the criminal underground for decades.” ‘Centuries,’ he thought.

He raised his head and was secretly pleased with the shock written on Aizawa’s face. “How…” he seemed to be grasping at straws. “How was this kept a secret?”

“I told you, it’s beyond classified.” He chuckled darkly. “Even a bigger secret than my own name. Every shred of information on him has been buried so deep not even Nedzu knew of his existence originally.”

“What happened to him?”

“I fought him. I won.” ‘If you can call half your guts ripped out a win,’ he thought bitterly. “He’s dead. End of story.”

Aizawa, however, looked unconvinced. “People like that don’t just go down quietly. Someone would have noticed something.”

“Remember that country-wide high alert six years ago?”

“Yeah, made travel a nightmare. Especially in Tokyo…” he trailed off, catching Nedzu’s attention.

“Something bothering you?”

“Six years ago,” he started, “that’s when I found Midoriya. Just a couple days after they called that red alert. Exactly three days later, in fact.”

“I recognize that look. You think the two incidents are related?”

All Might shot straight up from his seat. “You think Midoriya is connected to that villain?!”

“No! It’s just,” Aizawa sighed and ran a hand through the scruff on his chin. “Let me start from the beginning.”

“Please,” Nedzu waved a paw, indicating All Might should sit. He complied. “Tell us everything.”

“I got called into Tokyo. The police were investigating an accident; a moving truck plowed into a retaining wall. The driver died the next day, after ranting about a lab and needing to return. He wasn’t making any sense.”

“And you said this was soon after the red alert?” Nedzu asked. He returned to typing without waiting for a response, so Shouta didn’t bother answering.

“The detectives found traces of eel derivatives—“

“Eel?!” All Might squealed, face twisted into a grimace.

“—found in the truck,” he continued with a glare. "Tracked shipments of the eels to a warehouse that had been in full operation up until three days ago."

"The same day All Might fought All For One."

"The day I _killed_ him."

"I breached the building. Everything had been cleared out for the most part, but it was obvious what they were doing. Experimentations."

"Young Midoriya was…" he trailed off, unwillingly imagining the horrors the child could have experienced.

"I found a cell." Aizawa took his coffee and threw it back, drinking all of it in one go. "A prison cell with a ratty futon and a pair of kid's shoes. It was marked _Subject Observation_." 

Nedzu's frantic typing stopped as he became temporarily lost in his own dark memories.

"They kept him there four days. After, they moved him to a giant cylinder. No idea what for, solid metal, no windows, no lights, nothing. Just a control panel on the outside." 

He frowned as he remembered, "never figured out how they even got him in there." 

"Something happened, I'm still not sure what, but…" Aizawa sighed again. "The detective hit some button and set the kid off. Containment broke. We saw something straight out of a nightmare. The fear was suffocating.” He swallowed harshly. “I managed to erase the quirk and he tumbled out, crying to go home. I set him outside with the police officers and less than five minutes late he was gone.”

“Just...gone?” 

“Without a trace. I guess he got home; he seemed fine at the exam.”

“And you just left him?” All Might pushed. “You didn’t even look for him?!”

Aizawa seethed. “I tried! There was nothing to go on. No name, no age, not even a quirk!” He punctuated each word with a violent tap on the table. “No missing child report in Tokyo matched his description. Other work piled up.”

“So you left a tortured boy to crawl his way home.”

“And where were you? Tokyo is your territory. They had to call me all the way from Naruhata.”

“Getting half my organs ripped out saving the world!”

“That lab had been in operation at least five years before they got Midoriya.”

All Might ground his teeth in frustration. No one had talked to him like this in literal decades; not since he had literal and metaphorical power to throw around. He opened his mouth to respond in kind when Nedzu interrupted. “Gentlemen, that is enough.” He looked between the two, daring them to continue. Wisely, they stood down. 

“Now let me be the one to share information with the room. Izuku Midoriya was born and raised in Musutafu. His father went missing the night he was born. At the age of nine, his mother reported him missing. He returned home without injury the same night as your raid. He had been missing for nine days.”

Aizawa and All Might were equally shocked. 

“Nine days…”

“Tokyo to Musutafu on the same night?”

“Well,” Aizawa started with a smirk, “you did say you’ve seen him teleport with your own eyes.”

“Short-range, nothing like across prefectures!”

“Now isn’t this _fascinating_.” Both of them eyed Nedzu, his tone of voice was dangerous. “It seems like the case was closed after he returned home. No follow up reports, no hospital visits, not even a check in with the police.”

“I know I marked my report with an inquiry to alert me if a kid with his description turned up somewhere.” 

“Even more interesting! The incident is completely missing from the Tokyo Police Department records.” The principal looked up and met the other’s shocked eyes. “It is as if the whole thing never happened at all.”

“Aizawa, what was the name of the detective that requested your presence?” All Might asked.

“Tamiko Hayashi.”

“Retired, claiming stress and burnout, a month after the incident,” Nedzu announced. “She was lost several months later when her apartment building mysteriously collapsed. No known cause.”

“Officer Kimura?” Aizawa asked with mounting horror. “The rest of the officers?”

“Transfered or or retired. Officer Kimura was killed in action soon after Hayashi’s retirement.”

All Might held up a hand. “What about the driver that died?” 

“They never got a name out of him.” 

Nedzu began to rapidly type for a moment, then set back with a frown. “No vehicular incident was reported for that date in all of Tokyo.”

“Now that’s just impossible,” All Might scoffed. 

“It seems,” Nedzu continued with a hard look in his eye, “that the only proof that any of this even happened that night is yourself and Izuku Midoriya.”

Shouta fetl punched in the gut. “Who,” he has to swallow to force the words out. “Who would have the power to hide something like this so well?”

“We return to the question we spoke of before: who has that power and why would anyone go to these lengths? So many questions concerning Midoriya.”

“Without a ‘who’ it’s much harder to determine a ‘why’. So again, who would have the power?”

“The Hero Commission is a possibility.” 

All Might gapped at Nedzu. “They would never—” 

“So could this All For One,” Aizawa interrupted. 

He whipped his head around to glare at the scruffy hero. “He’s dead. Back to the Commission, why would you name them?”

“They are the ones with the most access to his quirk file.” 

“They also dabble in some pretty shady shit. But,” Aizawa stressed, “they have direct access. They wouldn’t corrupt the file like that. Some secret evil force powerful enough to control the underworld for decades while staying hidden on the other hand…”

All Might slammed his fists on the table and stood, smoke filling the room as his quirk activated. “All For One is dead!” Aizawa, unintimidated, met his glare with a blank face. He held his eyes until All Might collapsed back down into his chair and sunk his head into his arms. “He’s dead...He just has to be.” 

Nedzu reached over and patted the hero on the head like a child. His voice held no admonishment. “We have no reason to believe otherwise.” He returned to his computer. “And even if we are wrong, there’s even less evidence that Midoriya is working for him.”

"That's not what I was insinuating." Aizawa’s voice was firm. "He was a victim of human experimentation, not an accomplice of a criminal mastermind."

"No, of course not! In fact," Nedzu spun his laptop around with a flourish, hit a button, and a video began to play.

It was the camera feed from the staff ready room used during the exam. Yamada was there, doing final checks on the volunteer hours the second years earned for helping herd thousands of children. There was a knock and then a brunette popped her head in. Midoriya followed quickly behind her. Both of them looked determined.

"Excuse us, sir?"

Yamada startled, but hid it with a smile. "What can I do for you little listeners? Exam's over!"

"Umm...the super tall kid with purple hair," the girl started.

"Hitoshi Shinso, sir!" Midoriya spoke up next to her.

"Yeah, Shinso!"

"What about him kiddos?" Yamada said with a smile.

The two shared a glance and yelled at the same time. "Can you give him some of my points?!" The pro hero startled at their combined volume. 

"He pulled me out of a pile of rubble, even though his arm was pretty bad!"

"He's the only reason I got any points in the first place! I had to keep running from people that thought I was real. Shinso kept them off me!"

"He told us at the gates that he didn't get any points, at least give him however many points he gave up trying to save me!"

"He saved my life!

Yamada looked overwhelmed with the force of their pleading. After a moment, his expression changed and he smiled widely. He leaned in, setting a hand on one shoulder each. "I'm afraid we can't give him either of your points." Both of their faces fell in sync. "Don't worry about it, little listeners. You just get yourselves home safe, okay?"

Nedzu stopped the video. "Willing to sacrifice their own scores for another examinee. Very heroic." He closed the laptop with a click, and sat back in his chair. "Despite how utterly pointless it was in the end."

———————

Hitoshi held strong as long as he could, but the final line absolutely gutted him. He collapsed onto his bed with a cry. His emotions overwhelmed him and tears began to pour down his face. His loud sobbing attracted his mom from the kitchen. She quietly entered the room, joined him on the bed, and ran a calming hand through his hair.

“Shh...let it all out honey.”

“I worked _so hard_ …”

“I know,” she cooed. “You’ve gotten so strong.”

“The test, it was…” he broke off, unable to continue over the lump in his throat.

“Was unfair, I’m sure. U.A. has always favored physical quirks.” She continued to scratch at his scalp. It has been the only way to calm him down since infancy. “There’s always the Sports Festival right? Didn’t you tell me Eraserhead made it that way?”

He pushed his way out of her lap. “No Mom,” he swiped his arm across his face and sniffed. “You don’t understand.” He reached back over to his desk and slapped a hand haphazardly at the pile of papers. Suddenly a bright light lit up the room.

“Hitoshi Shinso! Welcome to Your! Hero! Academy!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aizawa's POV of the incident is detailed in The Experiment, the previous story in the series.


	6. Chapter 6

_Good morning_ **_M̸͙͙̤̹͌̈ͅö̴̯̰̭͘̕͜r̷̖̀̽̊̿͐ḡ̶͙̘̬̜̈͜a̶̩̥͑̿͆n̸̻̤̋̓̎͜_ ** _Looks like we have some tests to run through. Probably not the kind of thing you’re used to I imagine, but trust me, you’re going to do fantastic._

  
  


"Have you got your tissues? And handkerchief?"

Izuku rolled his eyes at his mom’s frantic worrying. "Mom." 

"What about your pencil case?" she continued, pacing around the living room. "Oh, I remember your first day of fourth grade, you were so excited to start that you plumb forgot your new All Might pencil case! You cried so much the teachers called Mitsuki to deliver it to the school!" 

"Mom, I've got to go meet Kacchan."

"She told me little Katsuki was absolutely livid when she showed up. The next year you forgot your lunch! Such a silly little thing to do. I had—"

Izuku cut off his mother's ramblings with a firm "Mom!" and held her fidgeting hands still. She startled, but looked up at him with soft eyes. "I've got everything. This is why we packed my bag last night, remember?"

Inko could feel her eyes watering, but tried to hold the tears back for her son's sake. Otherwise they'd both dissolve into sobs. "Oh Izuku." She lifted their combined hands up to rest them on either side of his head, pulling him down slightly until their foreheads met. "Your father and I are so proud of you." They both took a moment to breathe, gathering the strength needed for the day.

"I have to go or I'll be late." Izuku sighed and dropped his hands. She smiled and ruffled his hair before shooing him towards the door. He grabbed his backpack, just as large and vibrant as ever, and slung it across his shoulders. 

"Izuku," his mom's quivering voice drew his attention back, even as he had one hand pulling open the door. "You look great." His smile was blinding as he left the apartment.

Katsuki met him on the way to the train station, uniform perfect and a frightening scowl on his face. "Auntie still doing her annual first day inspection?" Izuku asked. He grinned as Bakugo's scowl only got worse.

"Don't get why she still bothers," he grumbled out while yanking at his tie. "It's like a damn straight jacket!"

"Her knots get better every year."

"Shut up! Least it's not like whatever the hell is up with your tie."

"Hey! I tried my best!" 

Both boys struggled with their uniform through the train ride to school. One trying to put it into some kind of order while the other attempted to escape the binding cloth. They were oblivious to the attention their clothes were drawing. Soon enough, their stop arrived and the two made their way through the station and down the street. Izuku abandoned his mess of a tie as the reality of the day finally hit him.

"Kacchan!" he yelled while jerking his head up and over to look at his friend.

Bakugo only side-eyed him as they crossed the street. "What?"

"We're going to UA!" An eye roll was his only response. Izuku flailed about, arms flapping as he spun to face Bakugo and continued walking backwards. "I know we found out a while back but it just hit me again. We're going to UA! Only one in three hundred get in each year! Thirty six students in the Hero Course, two classes of eighteen, and we got in!" His cheeks started to hurt with the force of his smile. "Aren't you excited?!"

Katsuki only rolled his eyes at him. "Tch. We made it." 

"Right! We actually made it!"

"No idiot!" Bakugo grabbed his arm and jerked him to a stop. "We're at the school!" Izuku stumbled, but quickly whirled around to stare in awe and the towering building. His friend sighed in frustration and dragged him past the gate and through the entrance.

"Thanks for waiting for me today, Kacchan. Who knows how lost I'd be without you. This building's so huge."

"Whatever. I ain't doing it again." Izuku smiled, hearing the 'so don't be late' that went unspoken.

"I'd never dream of blemishing your near perfect attendance record."

"Oi! It is absolutely perfect you little shit!"

Izuku smirked. "That's not what Auntie says." 

Bakugo growled back at him. "That old hag—" 

He was cut off by a commotion down the hall. A tall blue-headed teen seemed to be chastising a familiar head of purple. "—attacking fellow examinees during the exam! It is shocking that such a prestigious school such as UA would accept such questionable behavior."

Izuku wasn't surprised to see the same strict teen from the entrance exam chewing out someone else. Shinso did seem to be handling the barrage better than he had. His tired eyes were wide and brittle, however.

Katsuki and Izuku shared a quick look before they continued down the hall. Bakugo grabbed his tie by the knot and yanked it away while activating his quirk. One small pop later and the tattered cloth fell to the floor. He yanked his uniform top out from its neat tuck and flicked open his top buttons. He forced his way between the two, smacking his shoulder into the still ranting kid as he entered the classroom. 

Izuku gently tugged Shinso to the side as the other locked onto his newest target for a rant. "Remove your foot from that desk!"

"Are you okay?" Izuku asked.

"You'd think I'd be used to it by now." Shinso looked relieved, but his eyes were still dark. "I just thought UA would be different." 

Izuku cocked his head to the side, confused. "What do you mean?"

The other just scoffed. "No one ever accepts me and my 'villainous' quirk."

"There's no such thing as a villainous quirk."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Shinso said, eyes sparking in anger. 

Izuku felt his own ire rise. “Oh totally. I was just the neighborhood pariah for my own weird quirk. But what would I know about being treated like a villain-to-be?”

“Your quirk is amazing! You saved that girl at the exam!”

“And you saved me like ten times more!”

Shinso opened his mouth to respond but a bubbly voice interrupted him. “Ah! Curly hair and purple hair!” They both turned around to see the aforementioned girl standing behind them in the hall. “You made it in! Just like Present Mic said!”

The purple headed teen just looked utterly bewildered. “You asked Present Mic?”

“Of course!”

“Why wouldn’t we? You saved us both.”

“Excuse me!” All three of them jumped, not expecting the loud teen to return from chastising Bakugo. “My name is Tenya Iida, and I—“

“If you’re here to socialize, then get out.” The four of them stared down in shock at the yellow mass lying on the ground. A juice pack appeared from inside the sleeping bag. “This is,” one long suck on the pack interrupted the gruff voice, “the Hero Course.” The blob heaved up to stand and shuffled awkwardly between the frozen students and into the classroom. 

The sleeping bag cocoon collapsed as a very tired looking man stepped out. His bloodshot eyes roved over the class. “It took eight seconds for you to quiet down.” Suddenly, the tension in the room rocketed up as his eyes flashed red and his hair flew up into the air. “That is utterly ridiculous. Time is a precious resource. Do. Not. Waste. Mine.” 

“You’re Eraserhead!” Shinso and Midoriya spun around to face the other, both shocked by their duel yell.

“You know Eraserhead too?!”

“I research all underground heroes!”

Bakugo scoffed from his desk, foot still perched on top of the desk. “You’re a hero stalker, Deku. Underground or not.”

“That is enough.” The class refocused on the angry adult. “I am Shouta Aizawa, your homeroom teacher. I will not accept disrespect in my classroom. Now,” he started rummaging through the pile of yellow fabric, “change into your gym clothes and head out to the grounds. You have ten minutes.” No one moved, even as he thrusts a uniform at them. “Time starts now.” There was a mad scramble for the door as the students tried to make it on time. “Midoriya, Shinso, stay back.”

Izuku halted in his tracks, feeling nervous that he’d already gotten in trouble. Bakugo had also stopped, but Izuku waved him back down the hall. “Yes Sensei?”

The man was silent for a moment, just looking between the two shuffling teens. Finally , he sighed and spoke. “I’m not used to being recognized. By anyone, let alone two kids. Explain.”

“I want to be an underground hero,” Izuku started.

“Same.”

“Why? Most kids want to shoot for the top of the charts.”

“My quirk,” Shinso answered, “requires it. People that figure out the trigger can avoid it. Same as your own.”

Aizawa nodded and turned to Midoriya. “Underground heroes are more involved in intelligence gathering and espionage. My quirk’s good for that. Plus,” Izuku started nervously fiddling with his backpack straps, “they have the highest success rates for missing and kidnapped individuals. And you’re one of the best! The longest active underground hero still operating today! Not to mention that your success rate is unbelievably higher than a chunk of limelight heroes. And Musutafu doesn’t really have a large underground hero presence, so I probably spent more time on each individually in proportion to other areas…“

The teacher looked uncomfortable with the fervor of his answer and interrupted the mumbling with a raised hand. Izuku ducked down to hide his face, a bright red blush visible between his raised arms. “Clock’s still ticking to get onto the field. Go change.” Aizawa watched the two sprint down the hall in a panic. He sighed, gathered his thoughts, and then followed at a much more sedate pace. “This year is going to be exhausting.”

———————

Shinso and Midoriya weren’t sure if they made it within the time limit, but they arrived before their teacher so they counted it as a win. They jogged up to the class just standing around on the field, everyone looking around confused. Aizawa joined them a few moments later. “We’re here today to test your quirks.”

“What about the entrance ceremony? Or guidance sessions?”

Aizawa spared her a dry look. “Go ahead to orientation if you really want to. Just don’t expect to return to my classroom.” He paused, giving them the chance to leave. No one took him up on it. When the class looked appropriately attentive, he continued. 

“UA is known for its freestyle approach to education. There’s no time to waste on pointless ceremony when you are all here to be heroes. Softball throw. Standing long jump. The 50-meter dash. Endurance running. Grip strength. Upper body training. Seated toe touch.” Aizawa listed off, looking bored by the whole discussion. 

“Your standard no-quirks-allowed athletic performance testing from middle schools all across the country. The Department of Education still insists on prohibiting quirks when calculating the averages of those records. It is irrational to give you such a wholly inaccurate view of your own abilities. Bakugo,” the blonde stood up straighter as the teacher addressed him,” how far could you throw in middle school?”

“Sixty-seven meters.” 

“Good. Now move into the circle and try it with your quirk.” He tossed him an odd-looking ball, which Bakugo caught with a smirk. “Do whatever you want to without leaving the circle.”

His smirk turned almost feral as he eyed Aizawa. “You said whatever, right?”

“Give it all you’ve got.” 

Bakugo raised his arms and stretched until he heard crackling along his back. “Awesome.” He tossed the ball up and caught it, testing the weight. Then he cocked back and threw, triggering an explosion right as the ball left his hand. “DIE!” The class stared in shock at the force of the wind and sound. A few silent moments later, Aizawa turned to them with a tracker in hand, 705 meters lit up the screen. 

“You’ve been operating under the assumption that you could throw for 67 meters, when it is in fact 705. A 952% difference. It is important for us to know our true capabilities. This is the first step towards figuring out what kind of heroes you will be.”

“So we can use our quirks for real?!” The boisterous yell broke the awed silence of the rest of the group. “The hero course is great!”

“Yeah! This is going to be awesome!” 

“Awesome you say?” Izuku eyed the energetic teens around him, unnerved by the tense atmosphere surrounding their teacher. Shinso met his eyes with an uncertain look of his own. “You think the three years spent here turning you children into Pro Heroes will be fun and games?” The ice in his glare froze their blood. “I’m here to teach you some sense. The lesson for today? The student with the lowest score across all events will be expelled.”

“Whaaat?!” 

“Welcome to the Hero Course of UA High!” Aizawa threw his arms wide, grin sharp. “Your fates are in our hands and we will run you through the wringer.” 

“That’s totally unfair!” Uraraka yelled. “We all worked so hard just to make it here and you’re going to just kick us out on the first day?”

“Natural disasters, rampaging villains, kidnappings,” a chill ran down Izuku’s spine, “the world is unfair. Heroes are tasked with combating that unfairness. By overcoming whatever the world throws at us.” Aizawa swept his eyes across the class, looking for any signs of faltering. “That’s Plus Ultra.”He was pleased to see them pumping themselves up. “Demonstration is over. Now it’s for real. So bring it.”

The class shuffled over towards the racetrack, separating into pairs as Aizawa listed off the groups. Izuku ended up standing between Uraraka and the tall blue-haired teen from the exam and the hallway outside class. He looked just as serious as he did back then, which was intimidating. So much so that Izuku found himself flinching when he turned to him.

“I am Tenya Iida.”

“You said that before…”Izuku mumbled out what Iida looked like he was waiting for a response. “Oh! I am Izuku Midoria. We met at the exam.” 

Uraraka leaned around and started wagging a finger at the taller boy. “Where you were very rude!” Her racing partner, a teen with a large tail, looked away from glaring at Shinso to wave her over to the line for them to start. She left with a pout on her face, clearly not happy with leaving the two alone.

Iida looked alarmed before bowing deeply. “I’m sorry, I misjudged you. You perceived the true nature of the exam, making you the superior candidate.”

Izuku frantically waved him off. “I didn’t perceive anything! I just tried to help.”

“Still!” Iida stood up straight and began chopping wildly through the air. “Your actions were truly heroic. Not like that Shinso character.”

Like a switch had been flipped, Midoriya’s eyes turned sharp. “Don’t say that. Shinso deserves to be here, just like the rest of us.” 

“He attacked several examinees during the exam,” Iida stated, surprised by the sudden venom in the other’s tone.

“He saved me.” 

“And me!” Uraraka said as she popped back up next to Izuku, slightly out of breath from her sprint. “I’ve been gone less than a minute and you’re already being rude again?”

Iida sputtered, arms flailing, but couldn’t come up with a reply before Aizawa was calling them up to the line. He seemed to gather himself and turned to the green headed teen next to him. “I’m sorry for my words. I hope we can be friends.”

“Apologize to Shinso, not me.” Izuku bit out, keeping his eyes on the finish line. 

“Well then, I’m sorry for this race. Please don’t take offense, I am built for speed.”

“You won’t beat me.”

There was a beep, and then he was simply _gone_. Iida shot forward, switching into third gear, and crossed the line in a blur of blue. “3.04 seconds", the robot announced. He turned back to peer down the track, looking for his partner. He hoped Midoriya wasn’t too intimidated by his time. Iida’s confidence turned to confusion when he spied the dark shape standing still at the starting line. 

“Told you.” He whirled around and was startled by Midoriya standing next to him. A quick glance back confirmed that he was still at the start. But also right next to him?

“Operator,” Aizawa called from the sidelines. “What was Izuku Midoriya’s time?”

There was a beep from the bot next to the track before it replied, “Izuku Midoriya has not completed the race. The test is still in progress.” The class began to murmur amongst themselves, which only grew louder as the shadow doppelganger vanished into static without a sound. Aizawa, ignoring them, repeated his question. “The test is still in progress.”

The teacher sighed. “Iida, clear the track. Midoriya, go back and try again.” Iida started to make his way to the group, but stopped when the other teen moved. The air around them seemed to shiver as Midoriya suddenly appeared back down the track while another shadowed copy stood where he once was. “Operator, reset time.”

There was a beep, then “time reset.” Aizawa waited until the copy disappeared again before nodding at Midoriya. Another beep and Midoriya was back standing next to Iida in less time than it took to blink. And again, the bot failed to call out the time.

“Operator, what was Izuku Midoriya’s time?”

The robot seemed to glitch, letting out a high-pitched whine while it’s limbs flailed about. “The test is still in progress. Time is ongoing.” Iida and Midoriya leaped away from the machine as it began to spark. “You’re def-ect-ective.”

Aizawa, despite the sudden disturbance, kept calm. “Operator, run diagnostic.”

“Logging self-diagnostic. List: repair and maintenance protocols.” The bot wrenched wildly to one side. “Files not found. The test is still-still in progress. Time is on-on-ongoing. Logging self-diagnostic. List: corrosion. Files corrupted.” The thrashed again, jerking forwards as if to grab the gobsmacked runners. “Izuku-ku Mid-d-doriya—”

Suddenly, white bandages shot out and wrapped around the smoking bot. The two students turned to see their teacher, eyes blazing red, scarf billowing, and looking absolutely terrifying. He grabbed hold of the bot and smashed it into the ground until it was reduced to a few broken bits of twisted metal. Aizawa sighed and dug out a small bottle of eyedrops. “Well...at least you were the final two. Let’s move on to the grip strength test.”

‘We’re just going to ignore that?!’ the class thought as one. Aizawa completely ignored their shocked faces and shuffled them through the other quirk assessments. Luckily for everyone’s sanity, there were no more glitching robots to distract the class. The only other interruption was during the endurance race. Shinso suggested Midoriya mimic Yaoyorozu’s vespa scooter and Izuku carelessly asked him if he “wanted a ride.” Two minutes of uncontrollable laughter and one tomato red student later, Aizawa got tired of waiting and threatened to expel them all. Yaoyorozu, Midoriya, and Shinso received top marks of course.

Izuku was confident in his spot in the rankings, even after his less than stellar ball throw. He had attempted to push the ball farther with Remote Manipulation, but given the speed of the ball and the pounding headache growing behind his eyes, it was too difficult to focus. Still, his overall performance was acceptable. 

“Moving along, time for the results.” Aizawa seemed as tired of the whole thing as the students were. “Your total scores reflect your performance in each of the events. Explaining the process would be a waste of time, so all you get are the final rankings.” The students crowded around the board, eyes frantically roving about the screen, looking for their own names. Their teacher started walking towards the building, ignoring all of them. “We’re done here. Your documents about the curriculum and all that nonsense are back in the classroom.”

“Wait! What about last place?” There was a shout as an invisible, but still sharp, elbow rammed into the speaker. 

Aizawa didn’t even bother turning around. “I was lying. Welcome to UA.”

“What is up with him?” Uraraka asked as the group started to disperse. She looked over at Midoriya and Shinso. “You two headed to the station after this?” 

“Yup!” Izuku answered, while Shinso just nodded. “Hey Kacchan! Going home?” Bakugo didn’t answer, but still joined their group heading towards the classroom. 

Iida joined them as well, loudly lamenting over Aizawa’s deception. “To think our own instructor would deceive us like that!”

“I don’t know,” Shinso commented, “deception seems pretty par for the course for UA.”

Iida stumbled, looking conflicted, but nodded in agreement. “That is true. You are by far a better hero student than I and I am sorry for my words earlier. Please, let’s start over. I’m Tenya Iida—”

“From Somei Private Academy,” Shinso finished for him. “We all heard earlier.” He ruffled his hair, looking uncomfortable by the attention. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I’m Hitoshi Shinso.”

“Thank you for your acceptance Shinso! I hope we can work well together now and far into the future!”

“Jeeze, did your old school put that stick in your ass or were you born that way?” 

Iida immediately pivoted and began berating Bakugo—“Are you sure you’re in the right profession?”—even as the rest of the group started laughing behind their hands. They crossed the gate as one, Iida gesticulating wildly, Bakugo smirking, and the other three enjoying the show. 

Unnoticed by any of the students milling about the campus below, black beady eyes followed the group’s progress down the street. Nedzu stood at his office window, face unreadable and posture stiff, as Aizawa finished up his recounting of the incident. The busted up operator’s head sat innocently on the desk behind him. 

“Do you think it was a quirk?”

Shouta sighed, as hand scratching idly at the scruff on his face. “I used Erasure on it first. That would cancel out most technomancy quirks.” 

“And nothing else seemed off to you?”

“Well, Midoriya...he acted as if we had never met before.”

“Oh? You believe he was acting? 

“Trauma-induced amnesia, perhaps. Either way,” Aizawa heaved himself up and stretched, “kid’s got potential. All of them do.” 

“Thank you for the report. Have a nice night.” The teacher gave a vague wave backwards as he left the principal’s office. Nedzu remained at the window, long after the student in question had left his sight. “You’re proving to be quite mysterious, Izuku Midoriya.”

Behind him, the operator flickered, a dark light starting to glow from its eye.

“Izuku-ku-ku Mid-d-doriya...is still-is still-is still….ŝ̶̛̛̻̈́̑̎͝t̶͋͊̋̔͆ͅi̵̜̿͂̓̈́̄̒̀ľ̷̨̖̭̩̥̜̥̊͆͋̐͊͘̚l̷̢̹̈́ ̶͕̍̈́̂i̷̹͎̔͋̽͜͝͝͝n̶̘̰̂̓̈͂̏͛̄̃͝ ̴̜̬͚̤̄́̊͆̋p̶̧̛͇̱̘͇͇̯͌̋̈̆̒̔͝͝r̶̨̡̛̩̣̺̼̯̈́̎̓̌̃͆̒́o̸̧̦̩̽͗̈́̅͗͊̈͂͘g̵͖̥̔̆͌̎̓͝r̶̢̧̩͓̪̝͙͎̿̅͋̈̿͜͝͝ẽ̶̲̘̹š̵̢̢̪̖̄̄ś̸̛̩̓̌͊͘͠.̴̛̼̠̗̻̉͗̌͛̕


	7. Chapter 7

_I need to make a small adjustment to your components._

UA is the highest ranked high school for heroics. It produces some of the most powerful, widely known, and longest active Pro Heroes in not just Japan, but around the world. With alumni like All Might, Endeavor, and Best Jeanist, their superiority is clear. But UA is still a school, even if the public likes to forget that fact.

"Who can find the mistake in the following sentence?" The class groaned as one, unimpressed with Present Mic's enthusiasm over proper English grammar. 

"So boring…" Kaminari huffed out before his head thunked down on his desk.

Sero nodded in agreement while their teacher was facing the blackboard. "This is just normal school stuff." 

"I'm havin' a blast watchin' y'all struggle,” Shinso drawled out in English. 

"Loving that enthusiasm! Keep it up!"

The class was almost disappointed by how utterly normal the days had been since the QAT. No tests, no glitching robots, no headaches for their homeroom teacher. Just Art, History, Mathematics, and the ever dreaded English class. It was normal. And boring. 

"Now how about these prepositions?!" Nineteen groans and one smirk was his only answer. 

"Before you all scatter," Aizawa announced after their final class, "Hagakure, Jiro, and Midoriya. Report to the Auxiliary Support Studio. They're expecting you."

Jiro raised a hand, ignoring Kaminari's giggles. "What about cleaning duties?"

"Don't worry about it, go report to the ASS."

Aizawa kept his face unreadable. "Sounds to me that Kaminari is volunteering to do them."

"Yes sensei," they replied, one far more somber than the other. 

Izuku shoved his things into his bag, looking over to his friends. It was almost startling how quick his friend group had expanded from just Kacchan to include Shinso, Uraraka, and Iida. The serious teen hadn’t stopped his tirades of proper procedure, but now they knew it as his personality rather than a mark against their own. Plus, watching Iida sputter over Bakugo’s attitude and nicknames was hilarious. He was still fuming across the room from the explosive teen calling him a Sonic knockoff during lunch.

“Hey Midoriya,” he startled out of his thoughts, making the pencil case in his hand go flying backwards. Jiro stood next to his desk, a small smirk on her face as his writing utensils rained down on a napping Shinso. “Do you know where the Support Department is?”

“Nope,” he answered while trying to pick out pens and highlighters out of the purple bush without waking said bush.

“I do!” Hagakure yelled, one invisible hand pushing Bakugo’s head down into the desk. Shinso started awake, sending Izuku’s prized eraser flying into Yaoyorozu. “I know where the Support Department is!”

“You’re dead,” Bakugo growled, voice muffled by the desk.

“You’ll have to find me first.”

He freed himself with a grunt and raised a hand. “I don’t need to see your face to blow it up!” 

“Kacchan please don’t threaten our classmates,” Izuku begged. He finally finally shoved the last of his things into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. “You can’t murder someone in the first week. Plus quirks aren’t allowed in the classroom.”

“Tch, whatever. Go to your dumb meeting. I’m hittin’ up the gym.”

“I’ll meet you later!” Midoriya turned to the two girls waiting on him. “Let me just check in with Uraraka and Iida—“

“Is this Aizawa-sensei’s face?” Yaoyorozu asked, holding up his eraser.

Midoriya panicked, yanking his Eraserhead Head Eraser with his quirk and pulling his classmates towards the door. “Bye everyone!”

“No quirks in class my ass!” Bakugo’s yell followed them out the room and down the hall. He continued to drag Jiro and Hagakure away, long after they were out of the sight of their classroom.

“You’re going the wrong way,” the invisible girl giggled out. Midoriya stopped short, which was lucky for all three of them as two other students suddenly turned into the hallway. They would have crashed right into them without her warning. 

“Sorry!” Izuku said with a quick bow. “We have an appointment with Support and I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“It’s fine,” the green-haired girl said with a smile of sharp teeth. “We’re also heading to Support.”

“We can all go together!” Hagakure said, sleeves pumping up into the air with excitement. “I’m Toru Hagakure! My quirk’s Invisibility, as you can see.” She broke out into another giggle. “Or not!”

“Kyoka Jiro, Earphone Jack,” she said with a wave of her earlobes. 

“Satsuma Tokage,” the greenette introduced herself. “Lizard Tail Splitter is my quirk.”

“Izuku Midoriya, Shift, ” he said quickly, almost vibrating in place. “The name of your quirk sounds so cool!”

There was an awkward pause as the group waited for the taller boy with pitch black skin and white hair to introduce himself. When he seemed unlikely to do so, Togake elbowed him hard in the side. “This edgelord’s name is Shihai Kuroiro, his quirk is Black.”

“Tokage! They’re from class 1-A,” he hissed out. “Stop divulging secrets to the enemy.”

“Hey! Rude!” Hagakure yelled.

“It’s the first week, no one’s been here long enough to be enemies.” The greenette rolled her eyes. “You’ve spent too much time around Monoma.”

“Plus,” Jiro cut in, ”we’re the only ones who know where to go right? We only need to get along until we get there.” She looked around the group, each one nodding until Kuroiro sighed dramatically. 

“Yes, fine. Not enemies,” he ground out. “Yet.”

“Then let’s goooo~” Hagakure about-turned and started marching down the hall. “Follow me!”

Jiro shrugged in an almost-apology to the Class 1-B kids before following her. The other three scrambled to catch up a moment later as the invisible girl took a corner and finished from sight. 

The trip to Support was quiet. There were very few students in the halls this soon after classes let out, and the few that did pass them grew rarer as they crossed the HS Skywalk and officially entered the Support Division.

UA’s four towers were separated by the four courses of education: Heroics, Support, Management, and General Education. Each tower contained all three years of students for that course, plus any auxiliary gyms, studios, computer labs, and meeting rooms student’s could need. All tailored specifically to each separate course. The four divisions were physically kept apart by design, with the only connection between the towers being the four skywalks. Each connected two departments and were named for the two courses: HS, SG, GM, and MH. 

The halls were eerily silent as the group passed through the Support Department. The classroom doors here were spread farther apart and heavily reinforced steel, rather than wood and glass. Hagakure led them through hallways of intimidating metal until they came to one with a row of couches next to the windows.

“Ta-da!” The invisible girl twirled, gesturing wildly around the wide open area. “Welcome to the Auxiliary Support Studio!” Rather than one large door, there were several pairs of smaller ones spaced twenty or so feet apart from each other. Two older students sat at a desk set between two groups of four doors. 

“Tch, first years,” the brunet bit out while ogling his eyes. “Such children.”

The girl next to him also rolled her eyes, but it seemed to be for his words rather than the group of first years, “You’re literally only a year older.”

“That’s right,” he said snootily, “a whole year.”

The other just rolled her eyes again before turning to the group. “1-A and B right? Hagakure, Room C; Kuroiro, E; Jiro, H.” She railed off, gesturing to doors on either side of the desk. “Tokage, Midoriya, they’re not ready for you yet, please take a seat.”

The students split, the three entering their specified rooms while the other two chose a couch to wait. Midoriya turned to the other student. “Can I know about your quirk? Lizard Tail Splitter is what you said, right?”

“Yes,” she answered while nodding, “my quirk allows me to split my body into pieces.” Her hand suddenly disconnected from her wrist and began floating in front of her. 

“That’s so amazing! You can control them all individually?” 

“Yup.” Her hand twirled in the air and flashed a peace sign. 

“How’s your fine motor control? How far can you levitate them from you? Is there a time limit? You’re obviously not bleeding out everywhere, but how do you maintain blood pressure? What happens if a part got destroyed? Or if—“

“Will you just stop?” The upperclassman cut in. Midoriya turned and flinched at his glare… “Go have your Green Hair Weirdos Club meeting somewhere I’m not forced to hear.”

Izuku sunk down into the seat even as the other student smacked her classmate. “Stop picking on the firsties.”

“Sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it, he’s an ass.” Before he could apologize again, there was a beep, and the upperclassman looked down at her phone. “Tokage, they’re ready for you in Room I.” The greenette nodded, got up, and entered the room, leaving Midoriya alone in the hall. He sunk down into the couch, clutching his backpack. He couldn’t risk getting his work or notebook out, he’s already disturbed the others enough with his rambling.

Hagakure was the first to return, breaking the awkward silence. She pranced through the door, ignoring the boy’s huff of annoyance when it slammed shut. She flung herself in the seat Tokage had vacated. “They actually did it Mido!”

“W-what?” He sputtered at the nickname. 

“They did it!” She reached out and shook him in her enthusiasm. “Look!” One thing smacked into his face. Izuku assumed it was her hand based on her uniform sleeves. 

“I don’t see anything?”

“Right! You don’t! Isn’t that amazing? Here hold out your hands.” He complied as she pulled back. One sleeve moved to mess with the other arm. There was a click, and then a rainbow metal band fell into Midoriya’s open hands. 

He lifted it up to his face to see better, the band flexing and glinting metallic colors as it moved. “A watch?”

“Yup!” Hagakure answered. She plucked the titanium band out of his hand. “Now watch the watch.” It flipped around in her invisible hold before vanishing completely. 

Midoriya reached out and felt her wrist, the metal watch band was still there, just completely invisible like his classmate. “That’s so cool!”

“Right?! My costume is made the same way, so they had to test it out first. I almost worried they’d send me out naked…”

“No way they’d do that!”

“Ahem,” the upperclassman interrupted, “if you’re done fondling your classmate, they’re ready for you in Room B.” 

Midoriya jerked away, letting Hagakure’s arm go as if it scaled him. “Sorry!”

“You’re Kenranzaki and Ilyushin-sensei’s problem now.” He scrambled across the room and through the door, ignoring the other’s hissed admonishment. 

“You’re such an ass—“ the door cut off all sound from the hallway.

The room was small by UA’s standards, only about ten feet wide and a bit longer lengthwise. Two students, one with pink hair and the other blonde, sat between two adults at a table along one wall.

“Class 1-A, Izuku Midoriya, correct?” The woman, despite having her eyes hidden by a white blindfold, waited for Izuku’s nod before continuing. “ I am Ilyushin, the Head of the Department of Support for this school. Beside me is Bibimi Kenranzaki,” the blond lifted her arms up in a wide welcoming gesture, “Mei Hatsume,” the pink haired girl gave an almost feral smile, “and Pro Hero Powerloader.” 

“Hey,” the pro lifted his hand up in a quick wave. “I’ll take over from here.” Izuku stood a bit taller at their attention. All of their eyes felt like a physical weight on his shoulders. “We’re here today to make sure parts of your hero suit work correctly with your quirk,” he began. “We like to double check everything before you start practical training. For you specifically, your request form noted that you wanted a bag that could travel with you as you ‘shift’. Could you please explain what you meant by that?” 

Izuku nodded before starting in on an explanation of his quirk. “I can teleport short distances and mimic items. My clothes and anything in my pockets usually move or change with me, but my backpack just falls to the ground. I need to be able to carry supplies.” 

“That makes sense,” the pro replied. “Capture devices , first aid, communications, all important gear a hero relies on. Do you mind demonstrating your teleportation for us?” 

“Sure.” The room was small, so it was incredibly easy for him to focus on the other wall and _shift_. His backpack fell straight to the ground, scattering the shadowy double that had taken his spot. 

Powerloader cackled. “You didn’t need to drop your bag, but thank you.” He turned to the other two students, “what do you think?” 

Izuku, embarrassed, shuffled back across the room. He didn’t care for the interested gleam in the girls’ eyes. “Could I ask a question? Why are so many people involved?” 

“Sorry, there’ve been a lot of consults today, I forgot to explain.” Powerloader reached under the table and lifted a large box onto the table. “Hero students of every year come to us in Support for modifications to their suits. Because I work with the school’s main design agency, I’m allowed to complete small modifications and redesigns with minimal hassle.” 

The pro nodded towards the two students that were digging through the box, pulling out different bags and untangling straps. “I’m also given the freedom to sponsor support students that show great promise. Kenranzaki is a third year student, she’s been working with my agency for over a year now. Hatsume showed amazing drive during her exam. This meeting is instructional for them both.”

“You will also find it advantageous,” Ilyushin continued after Powerloader. “Those with...creative...quirk limitations are often seen as too complicated for most support agencies. If you continue to develop a relationship with our start students, you may find your path much more smooth.” 

Izuku bowed. “Thank you very much for this opportunity.” 

When he popped back up, Hatsume was in his face, smiling extra wide. “Difficult quirk? Color me intrigued! You’re a perfect subject to test my babies-to-be!”

“B-babies? What?”

She backed up, but Kenranzaki immediately took her place. She grabbed his face, turning it one way and then the other. “Poor dear, a face so plain will never quite stand out.” He didn’t know how she could even see his face from between her massive eyelashes. 

“Um, I’m actually going into underground heroics,” he murmured from between her hands. 

“Hmm...that’s probably for the best.”

“And that’s where I come in!” Hatsume shoved the older student to the side and retook her place. Izuku felt bad, even if she didn’t seem to mind the assault much. “Underground heroes depend on their gear more than limelight ones! No super strength to save their behinds like the Top Ten.”

“Even if no one sees you, one must remain fabulous.”

“Performance over aesthetics!”

“Students, please,” Powerloader interrupted their back and forth, “we’ve already gone past our allotted time.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hatsume waved him off and headed back to the table. She grabbed a large bag from the table and shoved it into his arms. “Try this!” He held it out, trying to understand the crisscrossing straps and how they were supposed to lay. “You said the stuff in your pockets travel too right? So maybe if we stray the bag to you tightly, it’ll work!” 

Kenranzaki clicked her tongue as the other two pushed and yanked the bag into place. “Sometimes simplicity is the most beautiful thing.” 

“Shush,” the pinkette called over her shoulder. She backed up and waved Izuku on to shift. Feeling like a bug caught in a web, he crossed the room in a blink. Izuku wasn’t too disappointed when the strapped bag fell to the floor into a heap of fabric. 

The upperclassman brought him a much smaller bag that hung much looser on his frame. It fell to the floor as well. 

A small bag with multiple straps? Straight to the ground. A bag slung across one shoulder joined the pile of spider bag. A lightweight drawstring bag looped several times around his shoulders slowly drifted into the accumulating mound of fabric. Hatsume strapped him into a massive mountaineering pack, with buckles across his chest and belt at his waist, and it still fell just the same. A randoseru in a truly shocking shade of yellow clunked to the floor, sinking as low as Izuku’s mood. He’d really liked that one.

Hatsume stepped back to survey the room: two piles of various bags, Kenranzaki pulling on her curly bangs in frustration, and Powerloader trying to suppress his laughter. The Department Head had long abandoned them to pay attention to a slim tablet in her hand. “I think we have to pull out the ultimate weapon,” she finally sighed out. 

The third year shot up straight from her crouch of despair. “No! I refuse!” 

“What’s wrong?” Izuku asked.

“It’s just,” Kenranzaki started, “Just...just too ugly!” She absolutely wailed as Hatsume brought over the last tote from the box: a waist bag. Izuku snapped the belt around and _shifted_ to the other side of the room. The blonde’s cries only grew louder at the sight of the bag still around his waist. 

Hatsume threw up her arms and yelled, “It worked!” 

“But at what cost?!” 

Izuku ducked his head at their dramatics. “I’m sorry?” 

“You should be!” 

“Now, don’t be like that Bibimi,” Powerloader said as he rounded the table and patted her back in consolation. “Plenty of heroes use utility belts.” 

“I’ve seen his gear spec sheet! The supplies listed won’t fit in a belt. He’ll have to go out with one of those...those monstrosities! Maybe two!” 

Izuku just stood there, confused, while the teacher continued to comfort the third year student. Hatsume walked over and took the belt from him. “Don’t worry about her, I have a great idea that could work.”

“Oh, will you need me to come back to test it later?”

“Nah,” she answered as she led him back to the door. “There’s no time. It’ll either work or it won't.” She lugged up his backpack with one hand and pushed it into his arms. 

“No time? What do you mean?”

“Either way, let me know how it goes!” She shoved him into the hall and closed the door behind him, ignoring his question. 

The hallway outside was deserted; there was no sign of his classmates or the upperclassmen. It was quite eerie. “Everyone must have gone home. Powerloader did say we were running long.” Izuku spared a look back towards the closed door behind him, then shrugged and headed back the way Hagakure had led them before. 

“Hello?” He walked through the halls, uncertain he was going the right way to the exit. He clutched at his backpack straps as he walked, drawing any and all comfort he could from the familiar gesture. His footsteps echoed loudly inside the HS Skywalk. “At least I’m back in the Heroics Department…”

Izuku wandered a bit, unsure where the first-year accessible gyms were, but sure he could find them. “If Kacchan is there, it shouldn’t be too hard to find.” There was a loud crash from down the hall. Another quickly followed, this time accompanied by a slight rumble of the floor. “Speak of the devil.” 

At the end of the hallway were a large set of doors, ‘Training Room Tree’ painted across them in bright red paint. Wondering if UA would allow such a simple error to happen, Izuku slipped through the doors and stopped short just as another crash rattled the room. “Definitely not misspelled.” 

The room was massively tall, almost three stories, and in the middle of it stood a writhing metal tree. It had long, whip-like branches that moved independently of the thick trunk. Some of the branches were covered in green targets, while others held what looked like crash test dummies up in the air. Mirio stood tall in front of the tree, looking every bit as heroic as every Pro Hero Midoriya had ever seen. 

Mirio launched himself at the tree and several branches shot at him with extreme speed, but they simply phased through him. He bounded through the metal whips, quickly deactivating his quirk to bounce off a target, activating it again to phase an attack, and deactivating it to yank a dummy out of the tree’s hold. 

He twisted to avoid another attack from his left and landed on a thick branch. Immediately long skinny thorns exploded out of the ‘bark’ below his feet. His quirk stuttered, and instead of leaping out of the way, he permeated through the branch and fell towards the ground. More branches reached for their hostage and Mirio reeled back a punch, but his quirk failed to activate and he wasn’t strong enough to prevent the tree from sending him crashing into the ground. 

Izuku watched all of this, captivated, from the door. ‘Mirio-sempai is amazing!’ He wanted to announce himself, maybe join his upperclassman in training like they had over the summer. But he wasn’t capable of the sheer power Mirio wielded with such ease. Izuku was better suited to the shadows and he knew it. He wouldn’t pass up a chance for some sweet revenge though.

 _Though I_ **_was_ ** _kind of hoping to scare you a bit there. I thought a sudden entrance would get a laugh!_

‘Mirio even looks like he needs a laugh,’ Izuku thought as he set his bag down next to the doors. The blond teen was slowly pulling himself up off the ground, one hand running through his messed up bangs, and a slight scowl on his face. It looked unnatural. 

Izuku leaped while his form _changed_ , limbs twisting back and growing dark as his size rapidly shrank. A blink later, and Izuku was replaced by a small four-legged creature that crept forwards into the room. He waited until Mirio was fully occupied with stretching out his arms, working out the strain of his exercise, and then jumped. He landed right on target, the back of Mirio’s head. The older teen yelped and spun around, looking for an attacker or to try to displace him, Izuku couldn’t tell. Then suddenly they were falling. 

There was no light, no air, no sound. The all-encompassing darkness stretched out as far as he could perceive. It was infinite, and instead of fear or insignificance, he was filled with peace. His thoughts calmed, all worries given up to **The Black** . He was _home!_

And then Mirio landed at the first floor of the tower and tore Midoriya off his head, throwing him across the entryway with a yell. Izuku rolled for several seconds, losing the hold on his form as he spun away from his friend. A bench finally brought his nauseating ride to a painful end. Midoriya stayed still, groaning as the Earth pitched widely below him. 

“Izuku?!” 

“Jeeze Mirio, I thought you were blowing off steam with training, not by beating up on firsties!”

“I wasn't! He just came out of nowhere!”

“Hey.” Midoriya peeled open an eye at a quiet voice directly above him. A dark-haired teen was kneeling on the ground by his head, leaning over to check on him even as he looked over at his two friends. “Are you okay?” 

“Just...peachy…” He groaned again as the ground shook as Mirio came over to check on him, leaning down into his space. 

“You just gotta breathe through it,” the blond told him. “First time I used my quirk on my whole body, I was sick for days. Couldn’t even think of standing without bringing my food up.” 

“What? The kid used your quirk?” A girl with flowing hair pushed the other two out of her way and began poking his head. It took far too long for Midoriya to place her as the girl helping direct students from the air at the entrance exam. “How did you use Mirio’s quirk? Can you copy his? Or borrow? Is your hair natural or do you dye it? What about contacts? Both green hair and green eyes are kind of suspicious.” 

“Natural,” he groaned out. “I look like my mom.”

“Your mom? What’s her quirk? Something like yours? Can she copy quirks too?” 

“Nejire, leave him alone.” Mirio interrupted her interrogation before it could begin again. “He didn’t copy, borrow, or steal my quirk. He got pulled with me when I activated it myself.”

“But your quirk doesn’t work like that,” the other teen stated. 

“My quirk has been changing, you both know that.” 

“So you can take other people with you now?! I wanna try!” Nejire begged. “Please please please!” 

Mirio shook his head, a dark look on his face. “After what happened, I don’t think we should. Izuku looks pretty bad.”

“I’m fine,” he said and pulled himself up from the ground. The group backed up a step, but stayed vigilant as Midoriya swayed. “It wasn’t the fall that bothered me, but the landing.” Izuku reached up to run a hand through his hair and hissed when he found a painful bump. “Is that what it’s like for you Mirio? The darkness, all that nothing?”

Mirio’s eyes were serious as they looked down at him. “Yeah,” he finally answered. “I pass through light itself, so my eyes can’t see. No air, so my lungs can’t breathe and my ears can’t hear. It can be quite alarming. I thought I’d never catch my breath the first time.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Izuku waved him off. “I don’t need to breathe.” 

“Whaaat?” Nejire pushed herself back into his face. “Everyone needs to breathe!” 

Midoriya, seeing as he was surrounded by overbearing upperclassmen, did the only logical thing he could: change forms and slip out between their legs. He changed back once he was out of their grabbing range. “I don’t need to breathe when I’m like that. So I’m fine. Really,” he stressed when they looked unconvinced.

Mirio, however, still looked troubled. “Why jump on me like that anyway?” 

“Well…” Izuku shuffled in place, kind of embarrassed. “I thought a sudden entrance would get a laugh?” 

He continued to stare for a moment, before bursting out in loud guffaws. “My own words used against me!” Izuku blushed, hiding his head in his arms as Nejire started laughing with him. The other one just huffed quietly at their antics. They calmed themselves down soon enough and Mirio turned back to Izuku. “You should be careful in training rooms though. Starting people can lead to a lot worse outcomes than an express ride to the first floor.” 

Izuku bowed low and regretted it instantly. His brain felt like it was sloshing about several seconds behind his skull. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

“Good,” Mirio said with a nod. “Let’s go get your things; I’ll walk you home, just in case you start feeling bad.”

“I appreciate it,” he said as he joined the group as they headed back into the meat of the Heroics Tower, “I was trying to find Kacchan, but got lost coming back from the Support Division.”

“It can be tricky for first years,” Nejire said with a smile. “I got lost for aaaages once.”

“You still get lost…” their friend commented quietly behind her. 

Mirio’s smile was wide as he led the procession down the hall. “Don’t worry, we’ll take the elevator down next time.” The Big Three’s laughter rang out as Midoriya groaned and hid his face. Again. 

He was never going to live this embarrassment down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone wondered, the eraser of Eraserhead's head actually exists; I own one and couldn't help sticking it in somewhere.


	8. Chapter 8

_ We make a good team, you and I. _

  
  


“So how’s Sir? I heard his intern was taking the attack personally.”

Tsukauchi sighed, rolled his eyes, and flipped a page in the file in front of him. “I don’t know why you think I, of all people, would have an update. He’s a Tokyo pro, far out of my jurisdiction.”

Sansa tilted his head to the side, eyes bright with mirth. “You’re a terrible liar.” Naomasa tried ignoring his fellow officer, but Sansa always gets what he wants in the end. It’s those damned cat eyes. 

“Sir’s fine,” he finally sighed out. “They managed to clear his eyes at the hospital. Couple of days of bed rest and he'll be free to use his quirk again.”

“That’s good,” Sansa trilled. “Nighteye’s a great hero, brings in lots of intel, never forgets about us when everyone else is blinded by spandex and super moves.” Tsukauchi nodded in agreement, but returned to his file rather than respond. The work seemed unending recently. “It is strange that no one’s thought to do it before now. Imagine the headlines a decade ago: ‘All Might’s only sidekick, felled by schoolgirl’s mace!’ Would have been chaos.”

Naomasa snorted. “The papers would’ve had a field day. My sister especially.”

“It  _ is _ odd though…” Sansa, it seemed, had something on his mind and neither of them would be getting any work done until he shared.

“What?”

“There’s been a recent uptick in villain activity, but not captures. Most of them manage to escape.”

“Criminals get away. We hunt them down. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. Unfortunately.”

“Look at this.” Tsukauchi leaned back in his chair as Sansa dropped a thick file on top of the one he’d been going through. The officer reached over him and pointed to a purple-shaded map with several red circles. “This is Mt. Lady’s patrol area. This week alone, it’s been hit three times, two muggings and a B&E, right in the middle of her active hours. The villains fled into small side streets and got away clean all three times.”

“She really isn’t set up in the right area.”

“But it’s like the  _ villains _ have just now realized that.” 

Naomasa snapped his head up to stare at his partner. “You think she’s being deliberately targeted?”

Sansa’s eyes were grim. “I think they all are.” He flipped a partition in the file. The page was covered in hero headshots and tables comparing active hours with incident reports. “Mt. Lady and close quarters. Kamui Woods got hit in the face with a molotov. Wash was stuck to a bullet train like a fridge magnet. Nighteye has been in the game literally decades and no one’s ever thought to target his eyes? Either these idiots grew a brain…”

“Or someone else is doing the thinking for them.”

———————

“I have come through the door in a completely normal fashion!!” The loud yell and slammed door startled Midoriya from his obsessive perusal of the hero forums. He considered it a success that he suppressed the instinct to launch his phone at the threat. UA, the epitome of extreme exposure experiences. Exemplary. Expeditionary. Extraterrestrial. 

Shinso’s snickering broke him out of his trance of E words rolling around his brain. “All Might himself just walked in and you’re practicing your vocab.” 

“All Might?!” Izuku slammed his phone down and shot up straight in his seat. 

Their teacher laughed loudly from the front of the room. “Yes! I am here,” he spun for a moment, “to teach Hero Basic Training!” All Might held his pose while the children chittered excitedly. Izuku found himself staring dumbstruck, he hadn’t been this close to The Number One Hero TM  since his run in with the Sludge Villain a year ago.

“No time to dalley. Today’s activity is: Battle Training!” All Might held out the card with a flair. Bakugo was practically vibrating in his seat. “This is the class that’ll put you through all sorts of special training to mold you into heroes! And for that, you need these!” There was a click and the wall began to move. Four glass cases rose from out of the wall, exposing twenty suitcases labeled with their seat numbers. 

“In accordance with your registry and request forms you completed before being admitted,” he suddenly dropped his volume, “with a few adjustments…”

“Costumes! Yeah!” The class cheered as one and even the quiet students seemed excited. 

“Grab your gear, get changed, and report to Ground Beta!” All Might escaped the classroom with a flourish of his cape, not that anyone noticed in their mad scramble for the cases. Izuku stayed seated, as no amount of gleeful anticipation was worth fighting through the mess of sharp elbows. He started to pick up his phone but jerked back when a case slammed down onto his desk. 

“Oi, stop being lazy!” Bakugo yelled as he chucked Shinso’s case over Izuku’s head. 

“Kacchan! My phone!”

“I’m conserving my energy,” Shinso drawled as he caught the case.

“Lazy piece of shit.”

“Thank you oh so much for enabling me.”

Izuku ignored his friends’ bickering and collected his possessions before following them out the door. Luckily the phone was fine, ‘thank you Gorilla King Glass.’ Disaster of explaining yet another broken phone to his mother averted, Izuku could turn his focus to his uniform case. He quickly grabbed one of the changing stalls as soon as they arrived at the gym. The case was lovingly placed on the bench and then rather violently thrown open. 

The bottom of the case held the actual uniform: a dark grey bodysuit with black panels running up the sides and down the arms. Darker grey gloves tucked nicely into gold bands around his wrists, matching the knee-high black boots with gold laces. A vicious looking metal face mask went around his neck to complete the look. But what truly excited him was the bag. 

“Hatsume, you mad genius!” A sling bag sat nestled in the foam; grey with black accents like his suit, with lots of zippered pockets and two gold pouches in the front. Remembering Kenranzaki’s comments about his gear made his hands itch to crack open the bag, but a loud call interrupted him.

"You done yet, Deku?"

"Coming!" Izuku slung the bag over his head and marveled at the various clips that held it in place. The single wide band looped through a strap on his shoulder and met a large black buckle that kept it from slipping. Small carabiners attached to the bottom snapped to his utility belt. The whole thing sat snug to his mid-back, large enough to hold supplies while ‘hopefully’ remaining small enough for Shift. There was a bit of weight to the bag, nothing anywhere close to his normal backpack, but Izuku could hear his friend losing the last of his patience. 

“Tch, about time.” Bakugo pushed off the wall and started walking down the hall to the grounds proper. “Least you don’t look stupid.”

Izuku laughed. ‘Not stupid’ was probably the best he’ll get. “Course no one could beat your design Kacchan.”

“Duh. Mine’s the best cuz I’m the best. No one’s even going to glance at the rest of you losers.”

“That’s the whole point, remember?”

“Looking good is important!” All Might stood tall in front of the class. “Look alive now, because from this day forward, you’re all heroes!” 

“Deku!” Uraraka waved from one side of the starting area. “Your costume looks so cool. Very mysterious.”

“What did you call him?!” She leaned as Bakugo stomped her way. 

“Deku?”

He didn’t stop until he was right in her face. “Don’t fuckin’ call him that!”

Uraraka’s confusion quickly shifted into anger. “You do,” she said while jabbing an accusing finger his way. Izuku put himself between his friends, one hand on their shoulders. 

“Kacchan, it's not a big deal,” he turned to face the other, “and sorry Uraraka, it's a childhood nickname between Kacchan and I.”

“So don’t!” Bakugo yelled before storming away towards the rest of the class. Izuku was torn between calming one friend and consoling another. 

“It’s time for Battle Training!!” All Might yelled, his smile looking a bit strained. “You all look good, but now you must focus on the exercise!”

Iida stepped forward, one hand raised. “Sensei, will we be once again performing cityscape maneuvers? As in the Entrance Exam?”

“Not at all!” Iida seemed to deflate. “Freestyle learning experience, remember? You’ll be skipping ahead to indoor battles! Villain fights are commonly loud, outdoors, and quickly contained. But the truly heinous villains are statistically more likely to stay safe and hidden indoors. Kidnappings, black market deals, human experimentation—“ Izuku shivered at the hero’s grim tone “—the most monstrous villains lurk indoors.”

“Here’s the situation!” All Might clapped, startling some of the more captivated students. “Villains will hide their nuclear weapon. Heroes have limited time to capture the villains or secure the weapon. Villains will capture the heroes or hold them off until time is up. Everyone got it? Good!” 

Their teacher gave them no time to ask questions, or in some cases, conveniently turned away when Iida and Asui raised their hands. “Now come draw your lots!” The class compiled without complaint until Team I. 

“Sensei, may I please be reassigned?” Ojiro asked. “I can’t work with him.” Shinso grimaced beside him, but kept his thoughts to himself. 

All Might seemed oblivious to the tension between the two. “Now that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the class. Fate has decided your partner.” The tailed boy glared and shifted away from Shinso, but didn’t speak up again.

“Moving on, first up are…” he reached into the two boxes and drew a ball from each, which he held up high. “Hero Team A vs Villain Team D!!” Izuku shared a look with Katsuki across the class. “This is a practical experience, so go all out. No holding back.” Izuku could feel the smile stretching across his face, one matching the feral energy coming off of his first friend. 

All Might started ushering the class away. “Team D enters first, you have five minutes and then Team A will enter. The rest of us will be watching via CCTV.”

“No holding back Deku,” Bakugo growled out. 

“No holding back Kacchan.”

Uraraka had her own fierce look. “I think we can take them Deku.” She stressed the nickname, which made him growl even louder.

“Bring it on Round Cheeks!” He looked ready to throw down right then and there, but Iida dragged him off into the building.

“Right, so,” Uraraka spun to face her teammate, “got a plan?”

“I have a plan, but…” Izuku looked off to the side, unable to meet her eyes. 

“What is it?”

“Don’t call me Deku, okay?” 

She took a step back at his serious tone. “S-sure Midoriya. I can do that.”

His face instantly brightened. “Awesome! Now, I have a plan, but can you tell me a bit about your quirk?” 

“Well, you’ve pretty much seen all of it. I touch an object and remove its gravity.” She waved, showing off the pads on her fingers. 

“Just inanimate objects? Or people too? Do you have a time limit? A weight limit?”

Uraraka blushed and fiddled with her helmet. “People too, even myself! But I get super queasy if I use it too much…”

“That’s fine,” Izuku assured her, “we shouldn’t need it much.”

A loud buzzer echoed through the air. “Indoor Anti Personnel Battle Training! Start!”

Midoriya pulled up his mouth guard while Uraraka donned her helmet. They shared a nod and started moving towards the building. “Kacchan’s going to come straight for me. He’ll ignore you and Iida completely. I’ll grab his attention and that’s when you can catch him.”

“What do you mean—“ Uraraka was cut off as Midoriya shoved her backwards. Bakugo came flying into the hallway from around a corner and let off an explosion right where they had been walking.

“Found you,” he yelled as he launched himself at them. Instead of falling back, Izuku ran forward. He ducked under Bakugo’s raised arm and tried kicking his feet out from under him. Bakugo stumbled, but used the momentum to spin around and face his target. “Stop dodging!”

“It’s what I do best!”

“Can’t be a pro if you’re always running away!” Bakugo threw himself into a kick propelled by explosions. Izuku sank to the ground and  _ shifted _ back to Uraraka, barely dodging the attack. He was happy to feel the weight of the bag on his back. Bakugo once again used the momentum to his advantage, swinging an arm wide to swivel midair and land facing his opponents.

“A tactical retreat is a completely valid strategy.” 

“You’re pissing me off!”

“This is exactly why your parents like me more.” Uraraka winced at Midoriya’s comment. She braced for Bakugo’s roar of rage and an even louder explosion, but none came. Instead, his face was down, shadowed by his hair. 

“They’re not completely loaded up yet,” he started, voice darker than anything Uraraka had heard before. He raised his arm and started fiddling with the large gauntlet. “But why not go ahead and see if they honored my design request.”

“Remember the plan,” Izuku whispered back to her. He raised his own gloved arms in a cross.

“What plan?!”

Bakugo smirked and grabbed the pin with his other hand. “They won’t die if he blocks!” Uraraka ducked down behind Izuku. 

The hallway lit up white and the building shook as a massive explosion ripped towards them. There was a concussive BOOM, then nothing but smoke and debris falling from the ceiling. Bakugo stumbled from the kickback, but felt perfectly fine otherwise. His earpiece crackled to life, screaming static and a high pitched whine, He yanked it out and threw it to the ground like the useless junk it was. 

“You two idiots survive?” Bakugo yelled into the thick smoke. A powerful smack to the face was his answer. 

———————

“You are childhood friends with Midoriya, correct? How do you counter his quirk?”

“You don’t. Be careful what you pickup.”

Iida faced a conundrum. He was a hero-in-training and yet forced to play the villain. This was a team exercise, but Bakugo had left to seek out their opponents alone. The smartest way to defeat Uraraka’s quirk was to clear the room of projectiles, but his teammate’s parting comment stopped him.

“Darn that Bakugo! Running off on his own…” A loud explosion rattled the floor, forcing Iida to catch himself on a pillar to not fall. “What on earth is he doing?!” He started towards the door as soon as the building stopped shaving. He raised one hand to his ear. “Bakugo, can you hear me?” Nothing but static answered him.

Suddenly the door was thrown open with a bang and his teammate stomped into the room. “What are you yellin’ about now Glasses?” 

Iida straightened up to his full height. “We are a team and you abandoned me to pursue our opponents instead of defending the weapon! I assume you engaged in battle, given the noise.” 

“Tch, duh,” Bakugo said, still nonchalauntly walking towards him. Several loud pops came from the floor below. 

“Such destruction is unbecoming of a hero!” 

“It ain’t my fault they built this place so shitty.” He passed Iida and continued towards the bomb. “Musta hit a gas pipe or something.”

“Gas?!” Iida yelled. “We should evacuate immoderately!” The pops of smaller explosions were getting closer. 

“Nah, I gotta win first.” 

“Bakugo, our safety is far more important—“ The door slammed back open and Iida spun to face it. “Bakugo?!”

“You fucking cheater!” The angry blond was floating in the air while attempting to pull himself through the door. One of his hands gripped the frame while the other shot off small explosions. His face and arms looked a bit banged up, as if he’d bounced hard against a wall. Uraraka came in behind him, yanking on his leg while looking green in the face. 

“The Hero Team WINS!” 

Bakugo fell to the ground with a loud roar as Uraraka released her quirk and vomited back into the hall. Iida spun around to face the weapon, where Bakugo stood with one hand planted on the side. “Weapon secured,” he said with a smirk. His form flickered, like static on a tv, then black, while Iida blinked in confusion. Between one second and the next, Midoriya stood in Bakugo’s place. 

“Students! Please come join us in the monitor room for your grading!” 

Midoriya passed a still frozen Iida and stood near his friend. “You told me not to hold back.”

“Still fuckin’ cheated,” Bakugo bit out as he heaved himself up off the ground. “Can’t believe you fell for that Glasses.”

“Excuse me?!” Iida yelled, finally snapping out of his shock. “You didn’t warn me he could turn into you!” 

“Students please,” All Might called over the loudspeakers, “collect Young Uraraka and return to your classmates.”

“I’m fine!” Uraraka stood up, one hand still clutching her stomach. “All good here, let’s not keep everyone waiting.” She turned, stumbled on the first step, but managed to stay upright. Iida ran forward to help while the other two followed much slower. 

Midoriya side-eyed Bakugo as they walked. “Sorry about what I said, I needed you angry and focused on me.” He grunted, but didn’t respond. “Of course your parents like you more.” 

Bakugo looked away towards the wall. “Tch duh, I’m fucking awesome.” 

“I’m really, really sorry,” Midoriya continued. 

“It’s fine, Aunty likes me better anyway.” 

Midoriya gasped and started to respond, but they had arrived at the monitoring room. A wall of sound greeted them as soon as Iida opened the door. 

“That was so awesome!”

“You just strolled by him for the win!”

“That explosion was insane.” 

The other students surrounded them, mostly yelling a play-by-play as if they hadn’t been the ones completing the exercise. Kirishima even grabbed Bakugo by the shoulders and proclaimed his ‘manliness’ is superior. Shinso broke through the crowd and stepped up next to Midoriya. 

“So if you could do that, why not just turn into the top performers for the QAT?”

“Well, I mimic physical form, not copy or transform. I don’t have their quirks. So it was better to just use my own. Plus,” he raised an arm to fiddle with his hair, “it takes a lot of concentration and energy to maintain. I’m exhausted just holding his form for that short time.” 

“Yo dude, your arm is wrecked.” Midoriya looked down at Jiro’s comment. His outfit hadn’t totally survived Bakugo’s massive explosion; while the bodysuit and bag were fine, the gloves had been incinerated. His arms were covered in scratches and stained black with soot. 

“I’m fine!” He raised both black hands and showed off his range of motion. “Nothing’s broken or sprained. My skin’s pretty resistant to concussive force, even though I can still get cut or stabbed as easy as everyone else.”

“Woah,” Kaminari said with awe in his voice, “that’s so metal dude!”

“Students, we must move on,” All Might said, trying to take control of the room. “All four of you did very well, even managed to avoid serious injury! The principal will be pleased.” He paused to laugh loudly. “Moving on, I’ll keep this brief, Midoriya, I name you VIP! Your clever use of misdirection was inspired and you took on a major hitter alone! Good job!”

“No, no, no,” Izuku stammered out with a blush. “Uraraka deserves it more, her quirk’s the only reason the plan even worked. I wouldn’t have been able to make the switch if she hadn’t held back Kacchan. Anti Gravity is really cool! Its applications are far more flexible than most of our quirks and her ability—“

“Moving on!” All Might yelled, interrupting his rant. “Hero Team B vs Villain Team I, report to your positions!” Midoriya bit his lip to keep from blurting out more words. Uraraka’s quirk was just so cool! She could float anytime she wanted, even without a tank! 

“Come on nerd,” Bakugo threw a towel at him before heading to the back of the room. “You can tell me all about Floaty’s quirk.”

“Really?! And you’ll listen? ”Midoriya followed him, wiping down his arms while the class turned back to the monitors. 

Bakugo snorted, “fuck no.” He settled against the wall, eyes never leaving the screens displaying the next team. Midoriya sat on the floor next to him. Shinso and Ojiro seemed to be arguing over something. Well, Shinso was arguing, the other was simply ignoring him while facing the weapon. 

“Second Match, Start!” 

Shoji started walking towards the building, but Todoroki shook his head and stepped forward. He placed a hand on the front door. Suddenly, the entire building was encased in ice, including the villain team. 

Bakugo snorted as Todoroki entered alone. “Dumbass forgot Eyebag’’s quirk.” True to his prediction, as soon as he entered the room, Shinso got a response and caught him with his quirk. Ojiro, on the other hand, looked livid. 

“Brainwash is perfect for this kind of thing,” Midoriya mumbled out. The drain of his quirk usage was finally starting to catch up to him. Mimicking people really was far more difficult than objects. “Not as fun as reversing gravity though.”

Shoji was fighting a brainwashed Todoroki up on the screens. The larger student was much too fast to be caught by the ice, but was unable to get in close enough to land an attack. Shinso and Ojiro were still frozen, but with the room encased in ice, there was little for them to do other than watch the two fight. 

“Imagine if she could create a whole reverse gravity field.” The edges of Midoriya’s vision were growing dark, the shapes of his classmates becoming hazy. “Could make elevators. Or traps.” The time between his mumbles grew longer. “Or a quick escape.”

“Shut up and nap dumbass.”

“...float in space…” Midoriya slept. And dreamed.

———————

Aizawa sighed in annoyance at The Number One Hero TM . “Four students with mild hypothermia, two buildings sustained widespread structural damage, and Midoriya passed out from quirk exhaustion. And you consider that a good first day of teaching?”

All Might squirmed beside him. “In my defense. Young Midoriya appeared fine when he entered the viewing area.”

“It’s not your defense that needs the support.” 

Aizawa eyed the halls as they walked through the first trial site. As their homeroom teacher, it was his responsibility to review their battles and provide in-depth profiles on their battle capabilities. Something about the first fight bothered him and the footage was damaged during the explosion. 

“You should have never moved straight into battle scenarios. These are children with almost no experience using their quirks at full power and with gear they’ve never seen before. You’re lucky no one died.”

“Died?!” All Might sputtered. “You’re exaggerating.” 

Aizawa turned his glare to the blond. “If I recall correctly, you yourself warned Bakugo that he’d kill Midoriya and Uraraka with that blast.”

“It wasn’t at full power! Plus, that kid knows his stuff. He was right that Midoriya could block it.”

“They should have never been in the situation in the first place.” Aizawa scoffed as he stepped over a demolished wall and finally entered the hallway in question. “Those gauntlets shouldn’t have been authorized for use anyway.”

“Do you want my opinion?”

“No.” Aizawa eyed the walls, there was something odd about the blast pattern. 

All Might coughed in surprise. “You treat these kids too carefully. You underestimate their ability to handle things thrown their way.” 

“These are children,” he growled out. “We teach them how to swim before throwing them in the ocean.” There were gouges in the walls, sharp lines that cut deep into the cement. 

“My homeroom teacher at UA did this exact exercise with my class!” 

“And that tells me every single thing I need to know about your capabilities as a teacher. 

All Might threw his hands up in frustration. “Arguing with you is infuriating!”

“That’s usually the intention of an argument.”

“What are we even here for?”

“This,” Aizawa answered, a hand resting on one of the deep slices in the wall. “This is where Midoriya blocked the explosion. There should be a radius of decreasing damage with a clear spot where it was deflected.”

“So?” He looked around, but everything just looked like rubble to him. With a strength quirk like his, broken walls and busted pipes all started to look alike decades ago.

“So there isn’t. There’s just these marks.” Aizawa took a step back and looked around the hallway. Eight diagonal slashes, as if a giant beast had raked its claws across them. “Absolutely  _ nothing _ about either of their quirks could have made this damage.”


	9. Chapter 9

_Warning: microgravity detected._

Ochako was dozing, floating through fuzzy blank space. It happened sometimes. She’d be too tired, too stressed, too _hungry_ to remember her sleeping mitts before flopping into bed. Her unprotected hands would grab a blanket or pillow and suddenly it’d be floating. On one occasion, even her bed! It was a rather rude awakening to roll off and fall from the ceiling. Both her parents had to help get it down and she had been sick for days.

‘Anti Gravity is really cool!’

Shadows skittered across her bedroom floor, right on the very edge of her vision. “Jussa dream,” Ochako slurred as she tried to roll over. Movement was slow and heavy, like trying to walk through jelly. “Mmm...raindrop cake…” Thoughts drifting from candy jellies to mizu yokan to mochi, she sunk deeper into sleep. 

‘Flexible applications...both combat and rescue...a quick escape…’

The shadows moved again, building up and coalescing into a tall form in the corner. There was something in the room with her. Ochako once again tried to move, but her body wouldn’t respond. Panic was very quickly replacing the sleepy numbness.

‘Create a whole reverse gravity field...a _lift_ field.’

The shape flickered like static and a black-purple arm reached out of the shadows. Ochako was paralyzed as it moved closer.

T̴̫̫̠̾̕h̴̡̦̙̐e̸͙̠͙͑͐r̸̦͔̞͑͝e̴͍̫͚͐̿͝ w̸̠̻̺̓̕̚a̴̙̻͍̓̈́̈́s̸̺͙͚͝͠ s̴̡͔̘͋̽o̸͕̘͔̐͘m̵̘͉̞̔͋͑e̵̢͕͙͛͊͝o̸͉̐͐̚͜n̸̦̪͛͒͠e̸̫̞͚͆̽ i̵̙͔̫̿̽͛n̸̪͙̔̈́ ẗ̸̺̫͙́͑͒h̵͍̞̙̾̈́͝e̸͉̠̿͜͝ r̴̟̘̠͌̓͝o̵̡͓̪̿̿͝o̴̢̢͇͆m̴̡͔̦̐̿̕ w̸̙͚̠̐̾̽i̸͇̪͔̽̓t̵̡̪͍͋̿̓h̴͉͍̒̚͜ h̸̼̫͕͋̈́͝e̵̠͓͖̿̾͋r̴͍̠̝̓̔͛

Ochako was dreaming, floating through fuzzy black space.

———————

Izuku ran full speed towards school and prayed between harsh breaths that he wouldn’t be late. If it wasn’t for the large yellow backpack, he would have used his quirk for the extra speed. Aizawa was far more frightening than any citation for public quirk use. He slept through both of his alarms and his mother eating for her shift at work. He missed saying goodbye, missed breakfast, missed walking to school with Kacchan, and almost missed the train! 

Dark hazy dreams plagued him throughout the night, leaving him Izuku in a fog of exhaustion and a terrible headache. The inescapable ringing in his ears wasn’t helping either. His tinnitus was unusually bad last night and the vague, almost-word whispers overlaid with a high pitched tone had followed him into the waking world.

“What’s it like learning from All Might?!”

“Huh?” Izuku jerked awake at the loud yell. A woman shoved a handheld mic in his face while he just stood there blinking.

“Answer my question!” The reporter moved in closer and Izuku finally realized he was stuck in a crowd of people in front of the school gates.

“When did I get here?”

Another reporter closed in from the side and shoved a different mic his way while a camera flashed. “Tell us about The Symbol of PeaceTM! Does he hold up in the classroom setting?” 

“Eh?” Midoriya tried to step back, but yet another camera prevented him from escaping. 

“Tell us about All Might!”

“How does it feel to learn from The Number One in his own alma mater?”

“What does he look like up in front of a classroom?”

The crowd was growing restless the longer Midoriya stood there not answering. “I-I uh…” He looked around for either an escape route or someone to come to his rescue. Unfortunately, it seemed like Izuku was the only one running late this morning. ‘Maybe I could _shift_ and crawl away below?’

“What does UA have to hide by refusing to answer our questions?” the first reporter yelled in his face. 

“Hey kid you don’t look so good.” The ringing suddenly turned sharp in his left ear. Midoriya yelped in pain and ducked down holding the side of his head. It felt like someone had shoved an ice pick in his ear. 

Suddenly the crowd backed off and someone yanked him even farther away from them. “UA has already given you vultures our official statement.” Izuku instantly calmed at his teacher’s angry growl. “This may be a public sidewalk, but we will not allow you to stand here and attack our students.” 

“We didn’t touch the kid!” 

Aizawa ignored them and turned around, leading Midoriya through the school gate. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Izuku shook his head as the ringing returned to its normal, annoying but bearable, level. 

“Need a pass to Recovery Girl?”

“No, just tinnitus.”

“Hey!” One of the reporters broke away from the crowd and stomped towards them. “Come on, we’d just like to ask about All Might!”

Izuku looked back behind him, not trusting them to not rush the gate, but Aizawa smirked and kept walking. “Ignore the rabble.”

“He—“ A loud klang cut the woman off. “What the hell?” Izuku couldn’t help but let out a shaky giggle at her muffled scream. 

“Serves ‘em right.”

Aizawa escorted him all the way to the classroom and stood at the front for a moment while the students settled. “I’ve reviewed the battle training exercise,” he said as he plopped a large stack of documents down on the desk. “I’ll pass out the individual evaluations later, but overall,” the class sat up straight with nervousness, “good job.” There was a collective sigh of relief. Kaminari and Ashido even dared to high five. 

“Two specific notes however,” the tension instantly ramped back up, “Bakugo, Midoriya, and Todoroki. This was a team exercise. If I were the one assigning the grades, you would have failed.” Izuku ducked his head while Bakugo clicked his teeth and looked away. Todoroki was just as unreadable as ever. 

“Same for you Ojiro.” The tailed student glared down at his desk. “A word of advice: grow up. Heroics has no place for personal grudges and neither does my classroom. Understood?”

“Yes Sensei,” he bit out without looking up.

“Now, on to homeroom business. We’ve put it off far too long.” Aizawa suddenly loomed over the class. “You need to pick a class president.”

There was a sudden cacophony of noise yelled both about how normal of a school activity it was and how they wanted the job. Midoriya just kept his attention on his notebook as different classmates talked about why they deserved the position. It was Number 14 and it still felt odd to have skipped over 13 months later. He still held out hope that he’d find the wayward notebook in some back alley someday, but he couldn’t just stop writing until that day came. He was just about finished documenting all of the quirks he’d seen since the beginning of the school year. He’d need a new notebook soon. 

“I don’t care how you decide, just make it quick,” Aizawa growled out, already encased in his sleeping bag and headed towards the floor. 

“A vote is the most logical!” Iida yelled out over the classroom.

“Excuse me,” Izuku said as he raised his hand. He jerked back as the entire class swiveled around to look at him. “I don’t want the position, please take me out of the running.” 

Iida had started nodding rapidly before Midoriya had even finished talking. “Is there anyone else that wishes to be removed?”

“Yeah, sounds like a real hassle to me,” Shinso said. He hadn’t even bothered to lift his head up from the desk. 

“I too wish to be exempt from such festivities,” Tokoyami said. Shoji silently raised a hand as well. 

“Very well then, let us commence with the vote!” The actual voting went much faster than the discussion. Papers were quickly shoved into a box Yaoyorozu created and tallied up. Most of the class had voted for themselves. There were several notable exceptions, however.

“Finally,” Aizawa sighed out. “Your President is Yaoyorozu and Vice is Iida.” Both of them bowed to the class from the front of the room.

“Thank you for this vote of confidence.”

“I will devote all of my energy into this position!”

“Why didn’t more people vote for me?!” Bakugo yelled as he slammed his hands onto his desk and violently stood up.

“Probably the attitude,” Sero muttered in the next aisle over. Izuku couldn’t help but giggle at the answering roar of rage. Bakugo glared back at him, promising revenge.

The glare continued through classes and all the way to lunch, where Bakugo slammed his tray down onto the table. “Who did you losers vote for?!”

“The very purpose of ballot voting is to protect political privacy!” Iida gestured widely with his spoon. “It forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmail, or vote buying!” Bakugo growled at him and took a rather vicious bite of his food. 

Shinso chuckled as he picked at his own bento. “Pretty telling that you care more about political privacy than being called a loser.” The purple-haired teen smirked at Iida. “You were clearly born for the vice pres roll.”

Uraraka leaned forward to see him down the table. “So you voted for Iida too?”

Shinso scoffed. “I voted for Pomeranian over here.”

“Fuck you Eyebags!”

“Why?!” Uraraka yelled out before bursting into laughter. 

“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean Round Face?!”

“For the lolz,” Shinso answered with very lazy jazz hands, sarcasm thick in his voice. Bakugo lunged across the table but Midoriya grabbed him, pinning his sparking hands. 

“Ambition and suitability are completely different matters. Bakugo is a clear example. He could never humbly accept his loss.” 

“I’ll show you humble,” he yelled, shaking off Midoriya. 

A loud, piercing alarm suddenly shattered the air. “Security Level Three has been broken! All students evacuate in an orderly fashion!” The students definitely did not evacuate in an orderly fashion, but instead fell into absolute panic. 

“What’s Level Three?” Iida yelled over the growing crowd. Their friend group stood up from the table and gathered tight together. Bakugo scowled and popped off a few sparks as students surged around them, leaving only a small pocket of space. 

“Infiltration!” Someone shouted back. “We have to get out of here!” 

The stampede of students grew even more frantic at the yell and not even Bakugo’s attitude could keep them at bay. A broad upperclassman suddenly ran towards them, bowling over half the group, and the crowd quickly separated them. 

Izuku was squished between several students, one arm reaching out trying to grab Uraraka. Someone tripped, almost bringing him down to the ground with them. Apparently it was Crush Izuku Day. The reminder of the media this morning made him want to smack himself. 

Izuku closed his eyes and _shifted_ his form. Other students filled in the empty space freed by his rapidly shrinking body. Izuku crawled across the floor, slipping between small gaps in order to get out of the crowd. He was mildly successful; he was no longer struggling to move, but the movement of the students as a whole felt even more random with his limited visual scope. 

Suddenly, someone screamed directly above him. Izuku skittered away even faster as other students nearby started screaming as well. Pressure slammed into his back and pinned him to the floor. The pressure was gone, then back again before Izuku could react in any way. Someone was _stepping on him_! The pressure was growing stronger and if Midoriya had bones in this form, he might need to worry about them breaking. 

He just needed to get **_u̲̗͍̓̆̓p̨̮̗̾͛̀_ ** **.**

The pressure was suddenly gone, along with gravity. Students screamed even louder as several of them floated up into the air in a tall column. With the chaos of the alarm, the levitating students, and Iida’s sudden spiral above the crowd, no one noticed the dark, spider-like shape crawling into a vent on the ceiling. 

———————

“Now, for today’s Basic Hero Training, we will be moving to a remote training site.” 

Sero jerked his hand up into the air before Aizawa had even finished his sentence. “What are we working on today that we need to travel?” 

The teacher flipped over a card and showed the class. “Rescue Training. Preparing you for disaster relief, from fires to floods.” His presentation was deadpan, a complete flip from All Might’s exuberant first class. 

The class erupted into excited murmuring at the explanation. Izuku kept his head down, picking at his bulging tie, while the rest of the class hyped themselves up. His headache and lethargy from that late morning still plagued him, even days later. It left him feeling absolutely wretched. 

“It’s up to each of you whether or not you wear our costumes. Some of them are ill-suited to this sort of activity.” Aizawa turned a harsh eye to the far left row, “or still damaged from our first training exercise.” Izuku sank even lower in his seat at the reminder. “That’s it. Go get ready.” 

Students started to mad-scramble for their costume cases, but Iida vaulted over his desk and landed at the front before anyone could get up. “I believe we have all had enough stampedes this week. We are hero students! We must consort ourselves with the utmost dignity!”

“Come on, Iida,” Kaminari whined while hanging half off his desk, “you’re taking this gig too seriously! Yaoyorozu, tell him!” 

The black-haired girl just slowly shook her head at their classmate. “I believe Iida is quite correct.” The class sighed as a group and slumped in their seats. Iida called them up by row and distributed the cases with a surprising amount of haste. Even if he wanted order, he recognized that their teacher had little patience for slow students. 

Izuku was one of the first to get his gear, their row was last in the roster but closest to the storage cabinets, and the first out the door towards the changing rooms. The arms of his suit had been shredded by Kacchan’s gauntlet blast and the rest of it had small holes from debris. He quickly swapped out his uniform for gym clothes, set his mouth guard around his neck, and snapped the supply belt around his waist. 

He left the changing area with Tokoyami and Shinso, both of which had very simple dark bodysuits and equally quick changing times. The walk was thankfully silent, as Izuku’s headache and tinnitus had only grown in strength since the morning. The bus was parked by a side entrance, one large yellow caterpillar that was their teacher slumped against the side. 

The three of them joined him on the ground, sitting in a loose half-circle as they waited for the rest of the class. Izuku pulled his sling bag into his lap and quickly investigated the gear within. Between being the first team to compete and passing out immediately afterwards, he hadn’t gotten a chance to check it all out last time before. 

One of the outer gold pockets contained a slim, matte black, tactical multitool that expanded out into several different tools. A small black case was in the other pocket. Izuku unsnapped the case to expose several sharp looking slivers of metal. 

“Look, we match,” Shinso shoved his own black case into his vision. “Are these lock picks?” 

“Yes.” The three startled at Aizawa’s sudden response. The man looked completely dead to the world. “You’ll be learning to use them soon. And the knives.”

“Knives?!” 

“What delicious chaos you two will cause,” Tokoyami said with an odd head bob. 

Izuku slipped the picks and multitool into their respective pockets and investigated the zippered section between them. “Found the knife.” It wasn’t large, just right under three inches, but the gunmetal folding pocket knife was surprisingly heavy in his hand. No way his mom ever finds out the school gave him this. Shinso dug through his own utility belt and showed of a similar, but black, pocket knife clipped inside a pouch. 

“The point on the end is for breaking reinforced glass. Like car windows,” Aizawa said, eyes still closed. Izuku wondered how he could tell what they were doing. He carefully put the knife back in its spot and then _finally_ opened the main section of the bag. It was separated into two parts: one flat that sat against his back and a much larger compartment that held more gear. 

A medium sized box took up most of the compartment, held in place by two elastic straps. First Aid was written in bright red lettering on the front. Several compression straps and carabiner clips crossed the empty space above the kit. Izuku assumed he’d be able to figure out what to carry once he was out actually performing his heroic duties. 

The flat side of the bag had two sleeves, each lined in soft tech-friendly fabric. Izuku’s attention was drawn to the larger one, which held a small notebook sized tablet. He carefully slipped out and was surprised by how thin and lightweight it was, without feeling like it would snap in half if he looked at it wrong. A slim stylus snapped nicely to the side. 

Izuku flipped it over, looking for a power button, but it flickered to life when his thumb glanced over the screen. He was surprised by the paper-like feel of the screen. His hands itched to start writing. Izuku flipped through the short instruction screens as other students finally started to trickle outside and move towards the bus. The tablet was monochromatic, could only be used to take notes, had little to no internet features besides syncing to his personal cloud account, and he absolutely loved it. 

“See Nedzu about the tablet after class.” Aizawa heaved himself up with a grunt and started walking towards the front of the bus. “He’s expecting you.” 

“Yes Sensei!” 

“Line up according to your ID number so we can board in the most orderly fashion!” Iida’s voice echoed through the air as he gestured up into the air to get the students’ attention. 

Uraraka giggled as she sided up next to the three early birds. “He’s really in rare form today, huh?”

“Yeah,” Izuku answered as he slipped the tablet back into the bag and zipped the whole thing up. “Iida’s been intense since Yaoyorozu swapped positions with him. I think he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone.” He picked himself off the ground and slung the bag over his shoulder. 

“He’s going full throttle alright!” 

Once they were all seated and the bus started moving, Izuku resisted the urge to pull out his tablet. They didn’t need to get parental permission, so the trip probably wouldn’t be long enough for him to get any real writing done. 

“Midoriya,” he perked up and looked over at the seat next to him. “I generally say what’s on my mind at any given time.” 

“Oh? Sounds like a very straightforward way of living, Asui.” 

“Call me Tsuyu,” she replied. Very straightforward indeed. “Your quirk is very weird, kero.”

Izuku practically blue-screened at her words. “Eh?!” 

“The fuck you say Froggy?!” Bakugo yelled from across several seats. Izuku waved him off and he flopped back into his seat to look out the window. 

Tsuyu just ignored him and held a finger up to her chin. “You change shape, you teleport, plus those weird shadow things. It’s really weird. How could that be just one quirk?”

“Yeah,” Izuku admitted while nervously fiddling with his bag and refusing to look up to see any of his classmate’s reactions. “It is pretty odd. I can pull things too, just like my mom. Other kids didn’t really like it either.” 

“Well I think it’s cool!” Izuku looked over at Kirishima, who was smiling widely at him. “You have a great flexible quirk that can do a lot of cool things! Not like my Hardening.” The redhead lifted up an arm and activated his quirk, making the whole limb turn sharp and jagged. “It’s good in a fight, but it’s really boring.” 

“Not boring at all!” Izuku leaned even farther forward to get closer to the quirk in question. “It’s pretty neat and just as flexible as mine. Plus,” he gestured towards Bakugo, “I can’t really fight people head on, I have to trick them somehow.” 

“But to be a Pro, you have to have a certain showiness~” Aoyama said with a flair of sparkles. “My Navel Laser is both strong and cool. Perfect for a Pro Hero.” 

Ashido laughed and elbowed him in the side. “If you don’t blow up your stomach on national tv.” 

“Actually, I’m looking to go into underground heroics. Popularity polls don’t really matter then.” Izuku held his own chin this time. “Edgeshot is the only Pro that originally started out underground and made it high on the official rankings.” 

“Yeah!” Kirishima yelled. “Your quirk is perfect for that!”

“Not many start out wanting to work in the underground sector, kero. Do you have another reason, besides your quirk?” 

Izuku squirmed in his seat when several turned their curious eyes to him. “I uh...well,” he looked around for a change of subject, but nothing came to mind. “My dad actually…”

Ashido leaped across the walkway towards him. “Whaaat?! Is your dad an underground hero?” The pinkette had stars in her eyes in her excitement. “Do we have two students from hero families in this class? First Todoroki and now you Midoriya?” 

“Uh, no,” Izuku answered, “But Iida is?” He sighed in relief when she turned her focus to the class rep next to her and began pelting him with questions. 

Tsuyu was not as easy to distract. “What about your dad, kero?” 

“Fuckin’ drop it Frog Face!” Izuku had never felt so saved by his friend’s cussing.

“You’re quirk is strong, but you’re unhinged,” Asui said, unintimidated by Bakugo’s angry growling.

“Oh I can show you unhinged!” He shot up out of his seat, but just as quickly stumbled when the bus rolled to a stop in front of a large building. 

Aizawa stood at the front. “If you are all done antagonizing each other like toddlers, we’re here. Get out.” The students exited in a rush, all of them excited to check out the new facility and get started with training. The class gathered right inside the doors, all of them dumbstruck by the sheer massiveness of the building. 

A tall figure in a white puffy coat and a black helmet met them at the stairs. They threw their arms wide once the class got close. “Welcome students to the Unforseen Simulation Joint!” 

“Space Hero: Thirteen!” Uraraka squealed as she violently shook Izuku without taking her eyes off the hero. “They’re my favorite rescue hero!”

The teachers conferred quietly off to the side for a moment, before Thirteen stepped over to the class. “Welcome again to my facility! I built the USJ to educate future heroes in search and rescue tactics in any scenario imaginable!” 

They slowly turned and gestured back towards the different sections of the building. “Floods, landslides, typhoons, heroes have to be ready for anything. Here in the USJ, we have six separate sections that emulate a particular disaster. Before these though, the first lesson for today will be basic first aid and CPR.”

Several of the more action-oriented students, like Kirishima and Sato, groaned. 

“But before even that, I have just one or two points to share with you all. Or three. Or four.” Even Uraraka slumped a little at the prospect of more talking. Thirteen raised their hand and showed them the caps on their glove. “As some of you may know, my quirk is called Black Hole. It can draw in and rip apart absolutely anything in the universe.” 

Uraraka started nodding with energy she usually only shows for sweets. “It’s an amazing quirk for all kinds of rescue!”

“Indeed. However, this quirk could easily kill someone. Or a lot of someones, very very quickly.” The mood in the group instantly tanked. “UA enrolls the best of the best, I have no doubt that all of you have powerful quirks. And I also don’t doubt that each of your quirks can also be used to kill.”

“We must never forget that it only takes one wrong move with an uncontrollable quirk for people to _die.”_ Izuku shivered as ice skittered down his spine. "Aizawa’s fitness test showed you your quirks’ current strengths. All Might’s battle trial showed you all the possible damage your quirks can create.”

“Here,” they opened their arms and gestured back towards the different zones, “I will teach you something even more important: how to save lives. Your abilities are not meant to inflict harm, but to protect. To save. To heal. To help _anyone_ who calls out for our aid.” The students stood in awe at the dramatic turn the speech had taken. “That’s all I have to say! Thank you for listening,” Thirteen said with a bow. 

The class gave them a standing ovation, while Iida yelled bravo. Each of the students felt punched in the gut and patted on the head at the same time, but had been utterly captivated by their words. Izuku could feel his cheeks hurting from smiling so much. He stepped forward to ask Thirteen for their autograph, but stumbled when his ears erupted in stabbing pain. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Kirishima asked as he dropped down next to him and set a hand on Izuku’s back. 

“Huddle up and don’t move!” The students startled at Aizawa’s command. They spun as a group and spotted a large black portal in the middle of the central plaza. It rapidly expanded into a large swath of darkness, from which people strutted out. “Keep back! Those are villains!”

The portal formed a vague, head-shaped lump with glowing yellow eyes. “Thirteen, Eraserhead, but no All Might…” a deep voice drawled out. “The staff schedule stated he would be here.”

A pale haired man stepped up next to the closing portal. “And we went to so much effort to gather everyone for the welcoming party. Came all this way and the so-called Symbol of Peace couldn’t even be bothered to show.” He stood tall and looked up at the students crowding the railings. “I wonder if some dead kids will bring him here?!”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> USJ contains one of the first scenes I ever thought of for this fic, so I really hope y'all enjoy!

_ You don’t know the difference between a bug and a feature. _

  
  


Aizawa stood tall, a pillar of absolute strength and calm while the students panicked behind him. ‘No,’ Izuku thought to himself, ‘he’s Pro Hero: Eraserhead.’ Knowing his teacher was one of the best underground heroes of his generation and seeing him here, capture weapon flapping in non-existent wind and imposing gold goggles protecting his eyes, where two different things entirely.  _ This _ is what he wanted to become: a guiding light for when everything looked so dark. 

Izuku pulled himself up off the ground with Kirishima’s help. The pain was fading slowly, the incessant ringing left him feeling unsteady. He stumbled forward as Eraserhead moved towards the stairs. “Sensei,” he yelled, catching everyone's attention. “You fight in close quarters with few opponents in enclosed spaces for maneuverability and quick capture! This many people in head-to-head combat…”

“No good hero is a one trick pony.” Eraserhead’s voice was calm, even while more villains walked through the portal below. “Take care of them Thirteen,” he said before launching down the stairs. The students watched in awe as the hero started picking off members of the mob despite how lopsided the confrontation seemed. 

Izuku hung back, one hand still clutching his ear, as Iida began herding the class towards the doors. Two villains stood separate from the crowd and simply watched the battle. The one covered in hands was even idly flipping through a book; not a care in the world while Eraserhead decimated their troops.

Izuku flinched at the loud crunch of bone as a massive rock morph villain smashed into a pile of three others. “He’s taking them on like it's nothing! Even with this large of a crowd!” 

“Oi Deku,” Bakugo shouted behind him, “quit gawking and let's go!”

Iida turned back and grabbed his bag, yanking Izuku with him towards the exit. “This is no time for analysis! We must evacuate!” 

“I cannot allow that.” Izuku stumbled again, both from the unfamiliar voice and the spiking pain in his ears. Iida dropped his bag and he fell to the ground with a groan. A large purple-black shadow with bright glowing eyes loomed between the class and the door. One section swirled together, taking on a vague head shape. 

“Greetings,” the villain began, “we are the League of Villains. We have invaded this bastion of heroism for one goal: the end of the Symbol of Peace.” The class shivered as one at the malice in the villain’s voice. To speak of death, of  _ All Might’s  _ death, so calmly, as if it was simply inevitable, shook them to their core. No one even noticed Izuku backing away in shock.

The smokey cloud wavered as the villain looked around the class. “We were under the impression that that All Might would be teaching today, but it seems that his schedule has been revised?” They paused, as if waiting for an answer. “Well,” they continued after a moment, “it is truly no matter as my role remains the same. Izuku Midoriya,” gold eyes pinned him in place, “Shigaraki would like a word.”

“What?” 

Anything else he might have said was lost as the ground beneath him vanished and he fell through empty black. Overlapping cries of alarm and his name were the last things he heard before the portal above him closed. Izuku found himself almost relaxing in the empty space. It felt a lot like Mirio’s quirk or even floating in a sensory deprivation tank. No lights, no sound, no worries. Even his ears had stopped finally ringing! Izuku smiled at the brief respite from the tinnitus that had plagued him for literal years. 

And then landed face-first onto hard concrete. 

Izuku groaned in pain as he drug a hand across his face. “Man, you kids must have really pissed off Kurogiri for him to drop you like that,” a rough, unfamiliar voice said behind him. “I’m almost impressed.”

Izuku rolled over and quickly pulled himself up into a crouch, ignoring the pain and vertigo the action caused. He’d been dropped into the Central Plaza, right next to the two villains hanging back. Sharp eyes watched him from between the dead fingers that covered the skinny one’s face. Izuku shivered at the thought. 

“So you’re Midoriya, huh?” The red eyes roved around, looking up at his hair before returning to look him in the eye. “Name’s a bit obvious, but we can change that.”

Izuku shot up and quickly stumbled back as the man, Shigaraki he guessed, started walking towards him. “I-I don’t...what? Stay back!” 

He ignored Izuku’s stuttering and got even closer. “I’ve been learning all about you, what you know, how you think. This,” Shigaraki finally stopped and held up a very familiar notebook, “really got me thinking about things. Studying. Planning.” He snorted, amused. “Not my favorite pastime, but Sensei approves.”

“How do you have that?!” 

“Luck really.” The man waved the notebook back and forth, the ‘Hero Analysis for the Future’ in his bold black handwriting mocked him from the hands of the villain. “Found it in some random tunnel.” Shigaraki chuckled, which sent a shiver down his spine. “Best loot’s always in weird spots.”

“They’re just some stupid notes. Give them back.” Izuku focused on the notebook and prepared to yank it away with his quirk. He reached out for the threads of remote manipulation, but froze as the huge bird-like villain suddenly snapped their head his way. The empty, dead eyes pinned him in place.

“Just some notes?” Shigaraki’s whispery voice grew darker and his hand twitched in agitation. “These changed my whole gameplan. Got me thinking about quirks, who has them, how to beat them. And you think they’re just stupid notes?!” He started scratching at his neck. “Why else would I bring so many damn mutant types?!” He threw a hand out behind them.

Izuku followed the Shigaraki’s wide gesture to see Eraserhead dodge around a villain with a flytrap for a head. Another, whose body was made of rocks, grabbed for the pro but got slammed in the face when he flipped out of the way. A large crocodilia-morph ran forward to join the fray. Ereaserhead was managing to hold his own, but Izuku could see his energy was flagging. 

“I just wanted to talk while we waited for All Might, but maybe I’ll just have Nomu finish this!” The black behemoth roared loud enough to rattle the ground. 

Izuku spun back around and raised his arms up in placation. “We can talk! We can talk!”

“Good!” The villain’s tone flipped like a switch and Izuku relaxed, despite the fact that the giant was once again staring at him. “Tell me,” Shigaraki flipped open his notebook and carefully ripped out a page. Izuku caught a quick flash of his Mt. Lady sketch before the villain dropped his pinky and the page disintegrated. “How would you beat my quirk?”

“Cut it off.” Izuku smacked a hand across his mouth before he could say the next stupid thing that came to his mind. Shigaraki just tilted his head in interest. “It’s obvious,” Izuku continued despite his best judgement. “Five-point activation needs five points. Lose a finger, your quirk can’t activate.”

The villain in front of him chuckled. “Sure you want to be a hero kid?” You sure jumped to mutilation pretty quick.”

“You asked!”

“And you said you’d cut off my fingers! Not suppressants, no bind them, or even just dislocate!" He let out an unhinged cackle. "Hell kid,  _ gloves  _ can stop my quirk. And you said. Cut. It. Off.” Izuku couldn’t stand the sheer glee in the villain’s voice. “It’s very telling.”

Izuku frantically shook his head. “I didn’t say I would—” 

“With ideas like these, you’d make a perfect Player Two.” 

He felt like he’d been punched in the chest. Izuku thought it hurt when neighborhood kids called him bad before, but to have an actual villain say the same thing? “I’m not a villain!” 

Shigaraki’s eyes squinted as if he were smiling behind the hand on his face. “Maybe not yet.”

“ _ Never _ !”

“Just wait until everyone finds out how helpful you’ve been to us lately.” The villain chucked lowly, while Izuku’s chest tightened. “You’ve really helped my League’s reputation. I’ve been using your notes to take on heroes here and there, and my friends have been very appreciative.” 

Izuku’s throat was bone dry. “What?” he whispered. 

“Kamui Woods. Mt. Lady. Sir Nighteye. All attacks that came straight out of this little playbook of yours.” 

“I never meant…” All of the news stations had been reporting increasing crime and decreasing capture rates in the past year. It physically  _ pained _ Izuku to think he'd had something to do with it. 

Shigaraki ignored his mental breakdown. “How do you know this stuff anyway?” He idly waved the notebook again, movements easy, as if he wasn’t in the process of destroying Midoriya’s whole world. “I already know it’s not your quirk.”

“I just…” Izuku looked around for anyone to come help him, but he was alone with the two villains. “I just see it. I watch hero fights and write down my observations. There's nothing special about them, anyone could do it."

The villain slowly shook his head. "You only needed a glance to figure out my quirk. I've been watching Eraserhead beat all of these nobodies and his weakness only just came to me." Shigaraki tossed the notebook to the side and shot off before Izuku could react, running towards his teacher with a hand outstretched. 

"Sensei!"

Eraserhead startled at his shout, but completed his flip and landed on the chest of a bird morph, the fragile bones cracking beneath him. "Midoriya?!"

"Twenty three seconds." Izuku could only watch as Shigaraki closed in on the pro. Eraserhead uses sneak attacks and close combat, he has no long-range defenses against disintegration! Izuku flinched at the harsh elbow to the gut. 

"There are moments when your hair falls after you take someone out." The villain’s hand closed on Eraserhead’s elbow, right as his floating hair dropped. "And that means your quirk’s on cooldown, doesn't it?" 

"Stop!" Izuku yelled as he stumbled towards them. He could see blood dripping from Eraserhead’s shattered elbow. "Didn't you want to talk?!"

Shigaraki turned back to him, hand still gripping the pro. "This is all part of it."

"Midoriya, get out of here," Eraserhead yelled before reactivating his quirk and socking the villain across the face. Two more villains converged on the hero, pulling him farther away before he could continue his assault. 

Izuku tripped backwards over his own feet when the hand villain suddenly shot up from the ground and walked back towards him. One piercing red eye pinned him in place. "You don't have the stomach for my League, but you can help me test a theory." 

"What?"

"Nomu, bring me Eraserhead." The silent behemoth moved too fast to see, knocking aside villains like toys to reach the pro. Izuku could only stare in horror as his teacher was grabbed by the head and slammed into the ground. Nomu effortlessly threw Aizawa across the plaza like a rag doll, sending his broken goggles flying. 

Izuku jumped as a hand, pinkie raised, landed on his shoulder. “Meet the Anti-Symbol of Peace,” Shigaraki said from behind him. “He was specifically bioengineered with Shock Absorption and Super Regeneration for one single purpose.” Nomu leaped across the Plaza in one bound to land behind Aizawa, who was struggling to rise. Nomu grabbed his injured arm with one massive hand and shattered it like it was nothing. “Can you guess what it is?” Shigaraki lightly shook him from side to side, like his notebook before him. “Use that big brain of yours.”

“D-Defeat All Might?” Izuku whispered through a dry throat. 

“ **Kill** All Might.” The villain chuckled darkly. “Canceling out quirks is pretty cool Erasaerhead, but ultimately useless against the natural crazy strength of my Nomu.”

‘His strength isn’t a quirk?!’ Izuku thought, hope growing. ‘If it’s not a quirk, then I can mimic!’ He focused on the large villain and began sinking into his quirk, pulling at the feeling of vague strings of his mimic. Nomu’s eyes snapped up to Izuku and he roared. Izuku lost focus when Aizawa screamed beneath the villain. Nomu had snapped his other arm like a twig. 

“Now isn’t that interesting.” Shigaraki pushed Izuku forward, towards his pinned teacher. “This is the second time that's happened. Do you and Nomu have some kind of connection?”

“Tomura Shigaraki.” Black swirled next to them and Izuku almost buckled as the piercing pain returned to his ears. Nomu perked up like a lap dog in front of them, dragging Aizawa up off the ground at the same time. Izuku could see the panic in his teacher’s eyes. 

“Kurogiri. Is Thirteen dead?” 

“They are incapacitated and the children scattered, but…”

Shigaraki’s hand grew tighter as the shadowy villain paused. “But?!”

“It seems that All Might relayed a message before we arrived. He will not be attending today’s exercise at all.”

Shigaraki growled and tightened his hold even more. “What was the point of all of this if the final boss won’t even spawn?!” 

Izuku tried to pull away, but the grip was bruising and Shift wasn’t an option so long as Nomu had his teacher pinned. ‘What do I do?’

“This whole run is trash!” 

‘I need to free Sensei, but how? Nomu’s too heavy to pull off.’ Izuku looked around for anyone to help. ‘If Uraraka were here…’

“What about the boy?” Izuku’s frantic thoughts froze at Kurogiri’s question. Shigaraki’s ranting stopped as well. 

“Oh yeah, the side quest.”

“Let him go! He’s just a kid!” Aizawa yelled and then immediately groaned as Nomu tightened his hold on his shattered limbs.

“You distracted me from my experiment!” Shigaraki dragged Midoriya by the shoulder to stand closer to the broken hero. “Have you ever heard of the Quirk Singularity?” He roughly shook Midoriya when no one answered him. “Have you?!”

“Yes!” Izuku squeaked out. “The theory that quirks will continue to grow in strength until our bodies can’t keep up!”

“You really are a smart kid.” Izuku sighed in relief when the villain’s grip loosened. “No one listens to the doctor when he starts talking about it. They call him crazy, say there’s no way it’ll happen.” Shigaraki stopped for a moment to scratch at his neck.

“I like to think we’ll level up with our quirks. It won’t take generations to get stronger, not when Quirk Awakenings are possible. You know about those too?” Izuku frantically shook his head, not liking the fear and understanding growing in his teacher’s eyes. “The right level of pain and stress can cause a quirk and its user to evolve on the spot, like an instant power up mid-boss rush.” 

“Eraserhead, you jumped right into our fight, even though you’re a rogue class, not a tank. Were you hoping to make the little kiddos feel safe? I was watching you fight; your quirk’s max duration got shorter and shorter the more you used it. So tell me,” Izuku gasped as Eraserhead’s eyes flared red at the same time as Shigaraki’s other hand closed on his bare neck, “which will fail first? Your body or your quirk?” 

Izuku’s thoughts were blank, nothing but bright white and ringing ears. It was like when Kacchan had discovered his quirk and accidentally blinded him for a moment when they were four. 'I'm going to die here.' The thought felt uncomfortably familiar.

"Midoriya, look at me." Izuku hated hearing Aizawa sound so rough and broken, but complied with his teacher's request. Green eyes met tired red. "Everything is going to be fine." He wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that the hero would save the day with some crazy super-move pulled out of nowhere. That someone, anyone, would step in. 

"No one's coming to save you, hero. Not All Might. Not Thirteen. Not one of the other teachers. No one." 

Shigaraki was right. They couldn't rely on someone to come save them, they needed to do something themselves. Which was almost impossible with Nomu pinning Aizawa on the ground. Izuku wasn't strong enough to lift the behemoth up off his teacher. His heart pounded in time with Shigaraki’s pulse he could feel through the bruising grip on his neck.

Aizawa’s jaw clenched as he strained to hold his quirk. Despite his best efforts, the red eyes were starting to lose focus. Izuku gulped and looked away as his body started to tremble. A flash of gold caught his eye. 

"Midoriya...kid…look at me." He didn't listen. He couldn’t watch his teacher strain to pull away from Nomu, despite his shattered arms. Couldn't watch him fight against the need to close his eyes. Couldn't watch his favorite hero have a breakdown because of him. He just couldn't _. _ "Izuku, I'm sorry." 

Aizawa blinked. 

Shigaraki cackled. 

And Izuku  _ pulled _ . 

Eraserhead’s heavy goggles shot up from the ground. Izuku jerked out from Shigaraki’s hold as pain started radiating out from his neck and shoulder. The villain reached out to grab him again but the broken hunk of metal smashed into the side of his head. Whispers filled Izuku’s ears as he ran at Nomu and instinctually raised a hand upwards.

Just like in the cafeteria, Nomu and Eraserhead lifted up into the air as their gravity reversed. Nomu released his prisoner, but made no other move to escape the lift field. Izuku  _ shifted  _ behind the barely visible column and  _ pulled _ his teacher away from the threat. His headache skyrocketed as Aizawa left the field and his weight returned, resisting hard against his quirk, but Izuku kept  _ pulling  _ despite the pain. 

Shigaraki screamed in rage as Izuku caught Aizawa with a grunt. The two tumbled over in a pile, but Izuku managed to yank his teacher somewhat upright. The villain frantically scratched at his throat while watching Nomu bob in the air. "You cheater! That's not your quirk!"

Izuku didn't know what came over him, perhaps it was Kacchan’s influence rising up after a childhood together. Perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of his hasty plan actually working. Either way, he was filled with dark satisfaction at the villains' expense. "I thought you wanted a mid-fight powerup!" 

"Don't antagonize the villains Problem Child," Aizawa huffed quietly, "not until we actually survive anyway." His eyes were pinched shut in pain as blood ran down his face and arms. Aizawa grunted and heaved himself the rest of the way up with Izuku’s help, arms dangling loosely at his sides.

"What do we do?" Izuku whispered. The field was already ending, which sent Nomu crashing to the ground. They were back at square one, but with a heavily damaged pro and a villain unlikely to waste any more time talking. And no one was coming to save them.

"Perhaps we should leave, Tomura Shigaraki." The black-purple mist expanded out, forming a rip in the air of the Central Plaza, just as it had the first time. "All Might is not here. We can simply try again at a more opportune time."

"No!" Shigaraki yelled, while gouging at his neck. Blood ran freely down his skin to vanish into his dark clothing. The growing pain at his own neck probably meant Izuku looked pretty similar. "We're not leaving after being disrespected like this! Nomu! Kill the hacker!" The beast shot forward with a loud screech. Izuku braced for impact.

"Nomu! Stop!" The behemoth froze as Shigaraki's voice echoed between the two groups. Both hero and villain turned to see Shinso and Asui standing chest deep in the waters of the Shipwreck Zone. They looked utterly terrified. "Nomu," the bird-beaked villain perked up the perfect imitation coming out of Shinso’s mouth, "take out Tomura!" 

The giant shot forward so fast, he was just a blur of black. "I won't let you!" A purple-black portal rose up in front of Shigaraki and Nomu vanished into the mist. The rip in space closed before the villain could return and continue his assault. 

"Bring him back Kurogiri!" The villain stomped his foot like a child.

The wispy gold eyes narrowed on the group of students, before another portal grew behind Shigaraki. "We cannot allow heroes to take command of Nomu. It is in our best interest to retreat."

Shigaraki growled, but the fire in his eyes had cooled. "This is game over for now, little heroes. But we'll be back for you soon enough." The villain spared them one last glance before turning into the portal, which shrank into nothingness and vanished. 

Shinso and Asui stumbled out of the water and joined their classmate and teacher in the plaza. Shinso ran to help prop up Aizawa, as he was the only one tall enough to comfortably take some of his weight. Asui dug through her supply belt and offered Midoriya a surprisingly dry gauze packet for his neck. She reached up and pressed it to his wounds when Izuku’s hands shook too badly to even take it from her.

"What do we do now?" Shinso asked, eyes blown wide in panic. 

Low groans from behind distracted the four. Some of the lower powered villains were starting to pick themselves up off the ground. A few seemed just as frightened by the fact that their ride was gone as the students were of the villains. Others looked ready to kill. 

Aizawa, one eye sealed shut with blood and the other blurry with exhaustion, pulled away from Shinso and stumbled forward. "Evacuate while you still can. The fight isn't over yet." 

The students stared gobsmacked at him. "You're too injured, kero," Asui finally mumbled out. 

"A hero's job isn't done until the villains are defeated and everyone is safe."

Suddenly, the massive doors at the front of the USJ slammed open. "I have made it to class like a normal teacher!!"

"Oh thank fuck," Aizawa murmured before collapsing backwards into his students' arms. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, this was intended to be both the USJ wrap up and the lead in to the Sports Fest, but it just got too long to keep going. Happy New Years!

_ I wish you were here with me  _ **_M̸͙͙̤̹͌̈ͅö̴̯̰̭͘̕͜r̷̖̀̽̊̿͐ḡ̶͙̘̬̜̈͜a̶̩̥͑̿͆n̸̻̤̋̓̎͜_ ** _. Not the way you are now, the way you used to be. I know we could take this together, like old times. _

Al Might knew he was a screw up. Had known it for years. Too focused on becoming All Might to notice Toshinori Yagi fading into nonexistence. Too focused on fulfilling his dream of creating a Symbol of Peace to notice the glares in his back as he stomped on their own shattered aspirations. Too focused on fighting his own demons to notice he was pushing everyone else away. 

“Missouri Smash!!” Too focused on stopping petty thieves and car chases to notice his own dwindling time.

‘My speed’s dropped,’ All Might thought as he shot up into the air, yet again trying to make it to class. He hears a call for help and turns midair to intercept, just like always. ‘I’ve been weakening ever since I passed on One For All.’ As much as he hated Nighteye calling after all these years of silence, just to shove a successor at him without any type of apology, the bespectacled man was right. All Might was  _ failing _ and needed to be replaced with someone  _ better _ . 

He knew he was a screw up when he stumbled to a stop before the UA gates, blood gurgling up his throat. Knew it when he dragged his broken body over the threshold and through the pristine hallways of the school. ‘I’m just a stain on UA’s reputation. Soon I’ll be washed out to sea like the rest of the trash on Dagobah.’ 

Knew it when Nedzu started in on one of his infamous lectures on teaching. Toshinori tried calling Aizawa and Thirteen to let them know he’d be late, that he hadn’t just  _ abandoned _ them. It was a guilty relief when neither of them answered, as he didn’t actually have the words to explain his own idiocy. 

He knew he screwed up by not following his instincts and heading straight for the USJ, his time limit be damned. But he could at least check in on the class, bolster their spirits a bit, really show them what a hero could do! ‘For the few minutes I can,’ he thought with a bitter cough. As soon as Nedzu turned to refill the kettle, Toshinori gathered the tattered remains of his quirk and fled out the door. 

All Might knew he should conserve his strength and use one of the on-campus shuttles, but jumping would be so much faster. It was worth it to see the surprise on his students’ faces! He landed with a thud in front of the doors of the USJ. Everything looked normal, and yet...something ate at him. ‘Should it be this quiet?’

All Might strode forward and built up his literally trademarked laugh. “I have made it—“ He ran straight into the massive automatic doors when they failed to open. “Eh?” He stepped back and waved a hand at the sensor. “Hello? Anyone there?” No one responded and the doors remained closed. “Come now, Aizawa, I know I’m late and that we don’t exactly see eye to eye, but is baring me from class really necessary?” 

A shiver crawled down his spine as a cool wind blew past. .

He braced his hands against the doors. “Last chance…” More silence and a sinking stomach was his only answer. All Might took a deep breath, plastered on his signature smile, and pushed. The doors slammed open with a mighty crash. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘go big or go home.’

“I have made it to class like a normal teacher!!”

All Might knew he was a screw up. It hit him particularly hard that he’d completely fucked up the moment he blundered into the building. The crumpled form of Thirteen’s unconscious body and shredded suit splayed out in front of the stairs caught his eye first. Second was the movement of Aizawa’s bloody and beaten body collapsing into the arms of the terrified students. The ragtag group of villains defending on the injured was third. Fourth was the knowledge that  _ he caused all of this. _

Students were suffering. Villains were moving. And he was just standing here staring like an idiot! “Fear not! I am here!” All Might shredded his tie as he stomped towards the stairs. “Sorry for my tardiness!”

“What a presence!”

“I’ve never seen him in person before!”

“Shut up idiots, we’re here to kill—“ All Might slammed a fist into the villain’s stomach before he could finish his sentence. He jumped between the group, bouncing between targets too fast to be seen and knocking them out. The last of them collapsed to the ground right as the pro came to a sudden halt before his students, their hair whipped backwards from the wind.

“I’m so sorry everyone.” All Might carefully lifted the unconscious hero out of their precarious hold. Young Shinso shook with nerves, purple eyes wild as he looked over his precious teacher. “I am here now.” 

Midoriya lost his battle against his tears and dropped to the ground sobbing, dragging Asui down with him. Her hands also shook as blood seeped out between her fingers, dying the bandages she pressed to his neck bright red. Shinso followed them to the floor and placed his head between his knees. 

“I know you three have gone through so much,” All Might said while leaning closer to their level, careful of the broken body in his arms, “but we must move to the entrance.”

“What about everyone else?” Shinso but out, hands yanking at his sodden hair.

“Where are they? What happened here?” 

“They separated us, kero.” Young Asui’s voice was as wet as her eyes and suit. “Right at the beginning. 

“A warp gate,” Midoriya muttered, head still low and tears soaking the concrete beneath him. 

“Fear not! I will go look for them as soon as you four are evacuated.” Warp quirks are rare, and frequently filled with weaknesses and limitations. Hopefully the other children were nearby. 

“He brought the villains to kill us,” Shinso said, finally raising his head. “You have to go save them.”

“Who, my boy?”

“Tomura Shigaraki.” Young Midoriya’s broken voice answered him. The boy looked back for a moment and something small suddenly shot towards the group. Midoriya caught whatever it was and hugged it tightly to his chest. Before All Might could question him further, a loud klaxon alarm pierced the air. 

“Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Students, please evacuate immediately! Intruders, make no sudden movements, the authorities are on their way!” The message repeated as small well lights rose up from the ground, creating a path towards the stairs. Six other paths stretched out into the USJ. 

“A message is here! A message is here!” All Might’s phone started going off repeatedly in his pocket. The pro could also hear loud buzzing coming from somewhere on Aizawa’s person. Obviously one of the villains had been disabling the alarms and preventing phone signals. It was a good sign that they were defeated. 

All Might bit back a cough. “Come now children, we really must go.” Time was ticking. He could feel his quirk slipping between his frail fingers like satin ribbons. He really needed to move this along. Shinso heaved himself up off the ground and helped Asui prop Midoriya up between them. All Might hefted Aizawa up higher, careful of his wounds. The group stumbled towards the stairwell while dripping blood created a macabre trail behind them.

“Deku!” 

“All Might! You’re here!” 

“Aizawa-sensei?!” 

Yelling bombarded them as Bakugo, Kirishima, Mina, Uraraka and Todoroki ran at them from a path on their right. The two groups of students converged and Bakugo took Asui’s position at Midoriya’s side. “What the fuck happened?”

All Might sighed in equal parts relief and frustration. ‘What the fuck indeed,’ he thought ruefully. 

Time started moving rapidly after that. He was finally able to herd the students up the stairs without any more interruptions. Two panels opened from the wall and ejected two med-bots that carried a large first aid kit each. All Might oversaw the creation of a triage station for the students two teachers near the broken doors. 

Thirteen was in a bad shape, suit and back completely disintegrated. Mina took over their care and fought back tears as she kept one comforting hand on their arm. Uraraka and Asui swarmed Aizawa and pressed gauze pads against his open wounds. Bakugo and Midoriya huddled together, the blond glaring at the bandages stained red while the other violently wiped the tears from his eyes. The last two students took up defensive positions at the stairs. 

All Might was filled with pride. These were teenagers with little training and yet they moved on instinct to secure the area and protect the wounded. They didn’t need a dying old man giving them orders. They didn’t need him. 

He leaped away into the USJ before he could succumb to his own misery. By the time he had collected the rest of the students from the Mountain and Conflagration Zones, his breath was ragged and his quirk was spent. Luckily enough, the other teachers had arrived to clean up his mess and take control of the situation. He fled to a nearby maintenance room and exploded into steam. 

All Might was hacking up his remaining lung when Naomasa came and knocked lightly on the door. “Long time no see, All Might.” The officer stepped into the room, hat in hand and a small smile on his face. “How are you, old friend?”

“Emphasis on the old,” Toshinori said sardonically. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sat up straight. His spine cracked like the old bag of bones he was. “I’m fine, how are the students? The villains?”

Naomasa’s face turned serious. “We’ve cleared the facility.” 

Toshinori choked on a cough. ‘How long have I been hiding in here?!’ 

“Close to 70 villains detained,” the police officer continued, nonplussed. “I’m going to be busy for weeks. Real ‘Plus Ultra’ of you.”

“It wasn’t me. Aizawa, Thirteen, hell,” Toshinori chuckled darkly, “those kids practically saved themselves. Speaking of…”

“Yes,” Naomasa nodded, “speaking of the students, I actually came to ask for your help.”

All Might shot up in alarm, body expanding as his quirk instinctually surged through his veins. “What’s happened?!”

“Nothing! Nothing!” The police officer raised his hands in placation. “The students are banged up but mostly unharmed. They’re worried though and a little high strung from what’s happened.”

“Of course they are!”

“Yes, and we need to collect their statements and the other teachers are busy helping with the villains. It would mean a lot to them if you came with me.”

“Ha! What help would I be?” His voice was bitter with self-flagellation. “Just a useless old man that abandoned children to fight for their lives.” 

“Well first off, they’re teenagers studying to become heroes, as one very loud kid told me. Second, these were low-tier thugs. The only threat they posed were numbers.”

“That doesn’t—“

“And third,” he yelled over the other man’s interruption, “they need you All Might.”

He scoffed. “They deserve better than me.”

“Yeah, well too bad. You’re who they want. So are you going to stay hidden in this closet or will you slap on that smile of yours and support your students?”

All Might looked away. “I can’t. I wasted all my time. I can’t do anything useful.”

“You just have to stand there and look pretty.” Naomasa suddenly chuckled. “I think your licensing revenue proves you’re good at that.”

“You’re an ass.” All Might sighed but nodded. He was a screw up, but this was literally the least he could do for his students. ‘Grin and bear it’ was practically his motto by now. Not even twenty minutes later, he wished he had stayed hidden in the maintenance room.

_ You caused this. _

“President of Class 1-A, Tanya Iida, reporting for duty sir!” 

Naomasa chuckled at his enthusiasm. “Thank you for meeting with us. Please, just tell us what you three experienced.”

“Very well! When we arrived at the USJ, Pro Hero Thirteen met us in the entryway and began our lesson with a lecture—“

Sato interrupted him with a loud laugh and a clap on his shoulder. “I don’t think that’s what he meant Class Pres!”

“They appeared out of nowhere,” Ojiro said while dusting soot off his clothes. “A villain made of mist opened up some kind of gate in the Plaza. Villains came pouring out.”

“Yeah! And Aizawa was so cool. He lept right over the stairs to fight them!” 

“We attempted to evacuate, as per our teachers’ orders,” Iida continued, “but the warp villain appeared and blocked us in. The fiend stole Midoriya away first, and then the rest of us while we were distracted.”

“We couldn’t do anything.” Sato’s shoulders sagged. “Some hero students we are.”

“Yeah,” Ojiro’s voice was equally glum. “We got dropped into the Conflagration Zone. Between the fire and the villains, I was really useless.”

“Nonsense my students!” All Might stepped forward and embraced the three. “You reacted to the best of your abilities. Nothing more to be done.”

_ Worthless. _

“A number of them attacked us in the Mountain Zone,” Yaoyorozu began, “but Jiro and Sero were able to hold them back long enough for me to create the insulation needed.”

Jiro smirked, one arm still looped around the dazed blond. “And then this idiot fried them all stupid. Himself too,” she snorted out.

“Woo hoo!” Kaminari yelled, body listing to the side from quirk overuse.

Sero laughed at his friend’s flailing, but winced when the motion aggravated his bruised ribs. “They were tough, but we managed to knock out the guy blocking the alarm.”

“Yeeeaahh…” poor Kaminari drawled out before tripping up Jiro and sending the two tumbling to the ground. Yaoyorozu just sighed and helped her classmates up.

_ This was all your fault. _

“Let’s hurry this the fuck up,” Bakugo growled out. “A bunch of weaklings attacked, we beat them like the nothings they were, and now it’s over. What the fuck else is there to talk about?”

Kirishima and Ashido looked nervously between the police officer and their classmate. “Bro,” the redhead began, “you were so manly in that wrecked city, but like…”

“Chill the attitude with the cops,” Ashido finished.

Bakugo just growled at the others. “This shit’s taking too long!”

“Young Bakugo, please,” All Might was almost impressed by the vitriol in the boy’s red glare, “it is necessary that we completely understand what happened. I don’t know why you are so eager to leave.”

“Heh?! Don’t understand?!” Bakugo stomped forward in aggravation. “Deku was attacked by villains again and you wouldn’t let me go with him!” Noamasa stepped closer as well, as if he was willing to defend All Might from his own student. The pro tried not to feel frustrated that he might need the help, no matter how formidable Bakugo seemed in his wrath.

Kirishima grabbed the blond in a headlock and yanked him away with an awkward smile sent the adults’ way. “It’s cool, he’s fine.” The redhead activated his quirk and ignored the explosion Bakugo let off right in his face. “When the misty guy took Mido-bro away, we were all too distracted from it to launch an attack. So it’s like, our fault we all got scattered.”

“No it isn’t,” Naomasa said with a shake of his head. “No victim is at fault for crimes against them.”

Ashido gave them a wobbly smile even as she smacked a hand over Bakugo’s roar of rage. “We just did our best to escape the zone. When villains stopped showing up to attack, we left and ran into Todoroki and Uraraka.”

“Yeah!” Kirishima continued, “and that’s when the alarm came on and everything. So we all followed the path back and ran into you, All Might. So...yeah...uh that’s it?” He looked over uncertainty to the pinkette, who nodded back. 

“Yeah, that’s it.”

All Might nodded as well. “Thank you for filling us in. You three did very well in handling everything these villains threw at you today.” Kirishima and Ashido both looked ready to cry at his praise. Meanwhile Bakugo used their distraction to yank himself out of their hold. “Please head to the exit, your parents have already been notified and on their way to pick everyone up.”

“What about Deku?” Bakugo growled out. 

“Young Midoriya is fine, he’s receiving care at the hospital as we speak. I’m sure you will be allowed to see home soon.” Red eyes met and held his own glowing blue. All Might never felt so small as then, pinned into place by this child. Finally, Bakugo looked away with a grunt.

“I hope you told his mom.” The blond said as he looked back towards the doors. “Aunty Inko will rip a fuckin throat out otherwise.” 

_ Pathetic. _

“We used bait and switch tactics,” Shoji said in a low voice. “The Downpour Zone was too harsh on my senses. I couldn’t do anything. Kouda and Tokoyami did all of the work.” Black Shadow skittered around the larger boy’s shoulders and patted his head. Next to him, Kouda frantically shook his head in the negative. 

“I believe he means we all three did our absolute best to beat back the darkness,” Tokoyami said with a nod. “You were uniquely disadvantaged by our unfortunate luck to land in a typhoon.” The rock-headed boy shot him a thumbs up and a wide smile, which caused Tokoyami to duck his head as Dark Shadow began to cackle loudly.

_ Their blood is on your hands. _

“It was really scary!” Hagakure yelled as she flailed her arms around. “There were soooo many people, but Todoroki froze them all like waaaaahh!” Her gloves made a wide sweeping gesture. “ And then Uraraka knocked their lights out! Hi-yah!” She punched the air while the brunette fiddled nervously with her hair. 

Todoroki stood away from the other two, eyes uncharacteristically wide as he stared off into the distance. “I didn’t even know she was there…” he muttered. Both of the visible teens were covered in scrapes and scratches and every single one of them felt like a punch in the gut. 

_ Useless. _

“They had a monster.” Shinso muttered as he and Asui huddled together for warmth underneath a bright red shock blanket. “He tore through his own allies like they were  _ nothing _ .”

“The leader said he was made to kill you All Might, kero.”

“Nomu snapped Aizawa’s arms like they were twigs.”

“He was trying to disintegrate Midoriya, kero.”

Naomasa sighed and crouched down to their level. “It’s going to be okay. Both your teacher and classmate are on their way to the hospital, where they will receive the best care possible.”

“Izuku’s neck was bleeding so bad!”

“I can still hear Aizawa’s bones splintering, kero.”

All Might joined his students and slung an arm over their shoulders. They were so small, so young, and yet so haunted by what they’d seen. “Young Asui, Shinso, I know it is difficult to think past it, but we must know what happened before you arrived in the Plaza.” Nothing but silence and two shivering students answered him. “The sooner we finish here, the sooner you may visit them.”

“They dropped us in the Flood Zone,” Shinso started. “There were a bunch of water-specific villains everywhere.”

“I pulled Shinso out of the water and onto the boat,” Asui continued when he fell quiet. “They tried to force us into the water by sinking it, kero.”

“They fell for my insults pretty easily. Caught a few with Brainwash and ordered them to fight each other. Usually a hard tap is enough to break my quirk, but,” the purple-haired boy let out a broken chuckle, “sharks and blood in the water and all that.”

“I jumped towards the Plaza with Shinso while the villains attacked each other. We made it right when Shigaraki ordered Nomu to attack our teacher.” Asui broke off with a shiver.

“Midoriya did something, I’m not sure what, but Aizawa and Nomu shot up into the air. He saved our teacher, and then Shigaraki ordered Nomu to attack and I couldn’t let that happen…” Shinso let out a few of his own sniffles. 

“I’m pretty good at mimicking voices,” he continued after a moment. “It just takes a bit of practice. Nomu took direct orders like he didn’t have a brain, I didn’t even need a response!” The student’s voice was growing more and more ragged. “It was so easy! I took control like it was nothing and ordered him to attack Shigaraki. I’m no better than the rest of those villains!” 

“Hey, no, don’t say that,” Naomasa comforted Shinso as silent tears ran down his face. “You’re a kid that defended himself and others to the best of your ability. You’re not like them.”

Asui nodded as well. “You’re the only reason they left, kero.”

_ You’re no better than them.  _

“This was all my fault!” All Might choked on a bloody cough at Midoriya’s yell, which came as soon as they entered his hospital room. The kid laid bundled up on the bed, a bandage covering the bruise radiating out of his busted nose. The too-big hospital gown slipped down his shoulder, showing off the tight wrappings on his neck and shoulder. 

‘Where he was almost disintegrated,’ All Might remembered with disgust. Naomasa was silent beside him, face uncharacteristically blank in the face of this injured kid. “That is not true, Young Midoriya.”

“It is!” Midoriya yelled as he leaned towards them. “Shigaraki even told me so!”

“Villains will lie to place blame—“

“You’re not listening to me!” The adults jumped as the lights in the room flickered with a momentary power surge. “The villains, they planned this attack using my notes! It’s my fault! All of it!”

“What notes?” Naomasa finally broke his silence to ask. Midoriya sobbed and collapsed upon himself. All Might stepped forward to comfort the boy, but the police officer’s hand on his arm stopped him. “What notes Midoriya?”

“Naomasa, please.” His old friend just shook his head. A notebook thunked against his chest while he was looking away. He fumbled the catch, but managed to grab it before it hit the ground. It was a normal looking steno notebook, Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13 emblazoned the cover. “What’s this?”

“My notes,” Midoriya answered with his head down and voice low. “I watch hero fights and take notes of what I see. Shigaraki had it. Said he used it to beat heroes. So it's all my fault. I’m as much a villain as the rest of them.”

All Might stood frozen as Tsukauchi took the book from his slack hands. The Izuku Midoriya he watched become friends with his successor, was a villain? The one help clear a beach everyone else had abandoned, helped plan attacks against Pro Heroes? The child that selflessly ran back to save a stranger in the entrance exam, when most had fled to safety, led to the attack on the USJ? “Nonsense,” he whispered.

Midoriya’s head shot up, his wet eyes on full display and tears soaked his bandages. “It’s true. This is my fault.” Tsukauchi was silent as he flipped through the pages of the notebook. 

“My boy, you can’t think…”

“Did you, Izuku Midoriya, give the villain Tomura Shigaraki this notebook?” Tsukauchi’s voice was as flat as his eyes that pinned the boy to his hospital bed. All Might startled at his tone and opened his mouth to chastise him, but Midoriya spoke first.

“No, but—“

“Yes or no,” the police officer continued, cutting Midoriya off. “Did you, Izuku Midoriya, give it to someone else to give to the villain Tomura Shigaraki?”

“No?”

“Did you, Izuku Midoriya, write these notes with the express purpose of using the information against Pro Heroes, your classmates, or any civilian?”

“What? No! I wouldn’t—“

“Are you, Izuku Midoriya, a villain?”

“No!” The lights flickered again as Midoriya shot forward in his bed. “I’m not a villain!” His voice pleaded with them to believe him. 

“How did the villain Tomura Shigaraki obtain these notes?”

“I don’t know,” the child sobbed out. All Might snapped out of his shock and laid a firm hand on Tsukauchi’s shoulder. “A year ago,” Midoriya continued before All Might could say something, “I ran into the Sludge Villain after school. He tried to take over my body! But I used my quirk and he couldn’t.”

“Your quirk?” The adults startled as the boy shifted in front of them, body vanishing and replaced with a black shadowy form that resembled a spider. Something deep inside of All Might pushed him to attack. The creature waved a tentacle arm at them and then just as quick, Midoriya was back on the bed, looking just as beat up as before. 

“I don’t need to breathe like that. And the villain was trying to suffocate me.”

Relentless, Tsukauchi continued to press. “And how does this pertain to your notes?” 

“Well,” Midoriya began, one hand starting to pick at a small bandage on his hand. He refused to look up at them, refused to see the hatred in their eyes. “I only change my form and clothes. My notebook was in my backpack, which fell to the ground. When I went back for it later, it was gone.” 

“Why did you leave it, Young Midoriya?” 

“I didn’t mean to? I was stuck in the villain’s slime body and lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was trapped in some kind of vessel?” 

Dread filled All Might as the puzzle pieces started coming together right before his eyes. If the child had been inside the sludge when he smashed the villain...and he had been paying more attention to his dwindling time rather than the muck he was scooping into the soda bottles...that would mean...

“It was pretty small and moving around,” Midoriya continued, ignorant of the horror growing in All Might’s head. “I don’t...I don’t like being trapped, so I moved around until whatever it was fell and broke open. I ran away and by the time I got back to my bag, the notebook was gone. Kacchan was so mad,” he said with a wet chuckle.

‘This was all my fault!’ All Might felt the weight of every single failure he’d caused hit him all at once. He’d kidnapped a child victim. Abandoned that victim to save himself and another against his aggressor. Stole him away long enough for another villain to steal his possessions. Which were used to attack several Pro Heroes and twenty children. All because he was too pathetic to catch the Sludge Villain before he could do more harm. 

The door behind them slammed open before All Might could drown in his own self-loathing. All Might and Tsukauchi spun around to see a tiny woman standing in the doorway. Her green eyes seemed to glow in anger, even as tears poured down her face. “Why did I find out my son was hurt from a coworker?!”

All Might gulped. He’d completely forgotten about Young Bakugo’s warning. 

———————

Naomasa sighed as he slipped around the raging woman and escaped down the hall to a meeting room the hospital had graciously allowed him to use. “What a mess,” he sighed out into the empty air. Each report from the students added to the picture of the so-called League of Villains and their goals: distract and separate the class in order to kill All Might, damage the reputation of the highest ranked hero school in the world, and destabilize the hero industry as a whole. 

Izuku Midoriya was, at best, a distraction that allowed the Warp Villain Kurogiri the time needed to scatter the other students without risking an attack on his person. At worst, he was an informant and a traitor that was pulled away from the class in order to discuss plans with Shigaraki and then subsequently attacked in order to keep his cover.

Naomasa knew which option his bosses would prefer. Which is the only reason he pushed the kid so hard in questioning. His quirk dinged true when Midoriya said he caused the attack. His later answers proved that the kid truly believed he was the reason he and his class were almost killed. Even though he was innocent. “Poor kiddo.” 

The police officer could tell All Might didn’t like how hard he was, but it was necessary. He also knew his friend was keeping something about the incident quiet; he wouldn’t have looked so guilty all of a sudden otherwise. For all of All Might’s need for secrecy, he sure left a lot of emotion free on his face. 

“My, my, my, isn’t this interesting.” Nedzu’s voice broke Naomasa from his musings. The principal sat at a nearby table, reading from Midoriya’s notebook. He must have arrived at the meeting room sometime during his musings. 

“The kid has a good head on his shoulders, for sure,” Naomasa replied. “But that is a dangerous amount of information. If anyone found out about it, he could be sued for aiding villainy.”

Nedzu looked up from his rapid reading of the pages and pinned the police officer with his beady black eyes. “Oh? Is that a threat against a student of mine?”

“No, but you have to admit, it is alarming.”

“Izuku Midoriya was truly distraught when he discovered his observations had been used for evil. I in know way believe he is anything but a hero-to-be.”

Naomasa sighed and rubbed his eyes. What a day it has been. “And are you willing to tell the Chief that? Steak your whole reputation on this one kid.”

“Please believe me, Naomasa Tsukauchi,” the principal said his name like it was a curse, despite his calm tone, “I will not hesitate to do anything in my power to defend the students in my care. Each of them are deserving of it.” Nedzu’s face was pleasant, but the police officer felt a shiver down his spine. 

“I will allow your officers to complete a security check all throughout the school,” he continued after a tense moment, “but I am sure you will find nothing incriminating. Not even these notes. I have read through them, and it is clear that Izuku Midoriya’s problem lies with his encryption rather than his intention. Something which I am already taking steps to improve.” Nedzu smiled sharply. “Please have a nice day.”

Naomasa took the dismissal for what it was and nodded. “You as well.” He was turning to leave when the rodent caught his attention again.

“Oh, and if the police chief would like to make trouble for my student, please remind him of his failings in finding Midoriya the first time he was kidnapped. I’m sure the Bakugo family would love to make his acquaintance again.”


	12. Chapter 12

_ There’s a lot at stake here. It’s too late to stick our heads in the sand. _

Izuku sat on his hospital bed, frozen in awe, as his mother verbally eviscerated the Number One Hero. All Might looked as surprised as his student as a woman that didn’t even reach his chest viciously tore into him. 

Inko Midoriya was not pleased that she hadn’t been informed about the attack on the school. She was angry that her son had been hospitalized from said attack. But she was absolutely enraged that her little boy had been  **interrogated** by the police, alone, while injured, without even thinking of alerting her! 

“And another thing,” she said while jabbing a sharp finger into his side, “the sheer audacity—“

“Mom!” Izuku interrupted when his teacher let out a shocked yelp. Inko whirled around to face him, eyes still fiery and hand up in preparation for another jab. Izuku called upon everything he’d learned in the last fourteen years of his life and opened his arms wide. “Can I have a hug?” 

Inko burst into a new round of tears and crashed into him with a loud wail of his name. “I was so worried when I heard!” Izuku frantically gestured towards the door behind her back. All Might, looking even more shocked if that was possible, gave a jerky nod before slipping out the room and silently closing the door. 

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” he said while hugging his mother back. “Already healed up and everything!” 

She pulled back and carefully held his face in her hands, moving his head around gently to assess each of his cuts and scrapes. “Oh Izu, you don’t look fine.” Her eyes grew hard again. “And they didn’t even call me!”

“I am fine!” He pulled her into another hug. “Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen took on the villains to keep us safe. All Might beat them back and stayed with us until the police arrived.” He squeezed her tight, knowing the mention of the police would just set her off again. “They all did their best.”

“Not enough,” she grumbled, eyes still wet. Izuku fought off his own tears; the room was definitely going to flood if they both got going. “And to not even call me! He’s lucky I didn’t smack him!”

Izuku snorted into her hair. “You can’t even reach his face!”

“I’ll bring a step stool next time!” They both dissolved into giggles at the image of tiny little Inko dragging a ladder up to the pro. hero. 

“Mom,” Izuku wheezed out, “you assaulted All Might!”

“And I’d do it again!” 

The fire in her eyes made him snort loudly and collapse backwards onto the bed. All of the terror and stress that had built up since the first villain popped up in the USJ had been incinerated by his mother’s protective fire. Izuku felt light and giddy, like gravity had no hold on him. A light knock on the door interrupted their giggle fit. 

“Co-come in?” The door opened, showing an empty hallway, and then closed just as quick. Large white paws grabbed the end of Izuku’s bed. Inko startled in the chair next to him. “Hello?!”

A large while mammal in a sharp suit pulled themself up onto the bed with a grunt. “Hello,” they said with a wave and a wide smile. “Am I a bear, mouse, or dog? Who cares! For I am Principal Nedzu!” 

“Principal Nedzu?!” Inko and Izuku yelled at the same time. 

“Yes, I am me!” The chimera chuckled for a moment, but then rapidly became serious. “I came to apologize on UA’s behalf.” Izuku sputtered as he saw his mother’s eyes once again sparked with rage. 

“It’s fine!”

“That’s not enough.” They once again spoke at the same time. Izuku shrunk into his blankets at the green and black eyes pinning him in place. “Just apologies are not enough,” Inko continued after a tense moment. 

“I agree!” Nedzu’s voice was surprisingly light. “The police are currently combing through the school as we speak. We will find the crack in our system that allowed villains to become so bold as to threaten our students.” Nedzu nodded to himself. “Classes are canceled for tomorrow, which gives us a chance to implement several new security measures.” 

“The media break in…” Izuku mumbled to himself, missing the way Nedzu’s ear twitched his way. 

“You are correct, Young Midoriya!” Izuku did not let out a startled eep, no matter what his mother’s laugh said! “The media break in most definitely the work of those villains. Which brings me to another reason for my visit.” The principal pulled Izuku’s Hero Analysis for the Future notebook out of thin air, and handed it to him with a flourish. “These are quite well done.”

“This was all my fault.” Izuku took the book and held it to his chest with a white knuckle grip. “These notes…”

“Are, as I said, quite well done,” Nedzu finished for him. “You are a child, Midoriya, none of this has ever been your fault.”

“But—“

“Do you blame Aizawa? Or Thirteen?” Nedzu continued over him. “Eighteen students were injured in their care.” 

“No! They kept us safe!”

“What about All Might? Villains only attacked because he was supposed to be there.”

“No, of course not!” 

Nedzu’s eyes were sharp. “Do you blame UA? We are tasked with protecting our students while on our campus. I wouldn’t be surprised if parents began to withdraw their children—“

“No!” Izuku frantically looked between his mother and the principal. “It wasn’t the teachers’, All Might’s, or UA’s fault! Mom, you  _ can’t _ .” 

Inko’s eyes were wet as they met his own. “Who’s fault is it then?” 

“Shigaraki’s! The villains that attacked us!” 

“Not yours,” she whispered. 

“Not mine,” he whispered back.

“Not yours, Young Midoriya,” Nedzu agreed. “In fact, I have another gift!” The principal flourished his paw again and the tablet from his gear bag appeared. “We were supposed to meet after your lesson at the USJ to discuss it, but now is just as good!”

Izuku set his notebook down on his lap and accepted the tablet. The screen lit up with a beep. “Aizawa-sensei mentioned something like that.”

“Quite right,” Nedzu said with a nod, “I believe this tablet would help prevent anyone from obtaining your notes, villain or otherwise, and use them in a way you don’t condone. It is password protected and GPS enabled, with encrypted uploads to a personal cloud storage on UA’s servers. Only you would be able to access them. They would be safe.”

“But,” Izuku said in shock, “you didn’t even know about my notes before now.” Nedzu simply smiled at him. “Thank you.” 

"It has been a pleasure! I will leave you to rest now." The chimera hopped off the bed with a small huff and walked towards the door, paws tucked behind his back. "Have a nice night." The door opened and closed without a sound. 

"Izu," his mom started as she ran through his hair in comfort. "I have to go back to work, but I'll be here in the morning to take you home. Okay?" She pulled him into a hug. 

Izuku leaned into her warm comfort and nodded. “I’ll be okay. I’ll spend the whole time rewriting my notes!” 

Inko leaned back with a chuckle. “Be sure to get some rest. Don’t stay up all night writing!”

“I promise.” She gave him a look. “I will!”

“Mm hmm, well I’ll be sure to ask the nurses tomorrow.” Inko gave him a conspiring look. “If they give a good report, we’ll sneak up to the roof and stargaze, okay?”

“Yesss!" Izuku hissed out in glee and snuggled down into his hospital bed. His mom laughed and left for the exit. She paused with one hand on the doorknob.

"Izuku…," she started without turning around. "Your father and I love you very much." 

Warmth bloomed in his chest like a growing ember. "I love you too." Inko nodded once and left without looking back.

Izuku dove straight into copying his notes down as soon as he was alone. The tablet was surprisingly easy to use: it was light enough to hold for a while without getting a cramp, the paper-like screen was remarkably close to writing in his original notebooks, and the digital filing system made it simple to organize details across multiple pages. He tore through the pages like a madman for hours. 

Consumed with writing as he was, Izuku completely ignored the nurses breezing in and out to check on him. He worked straight through dinner, as the miyabi soup, okayu, and shogayu were easy to drink down with one hand. Even though it had been healed by a doctor's quirk, his throat still felt ragged, inside and out. 

It was the overhead lights dimming that startled Izuku out of his writing fervor. His hands twitched to keep going, to keep adding new details to Eraserhead’s entry given the first-hand experiences of the USJ. Suddenly, his arm cramped and he dropped his stylus to the bed with a pained hiss.

"Guess I overdid it." Izuku flipped the protective cover over the screen and clipped the pen back to the side. The tablet and notebook were carefully deposited on the side table and he dived under the covers to sleep. At least...he  _ tried _ . 

Izuku loudly sighed some indeterminate time later. He knew he needed to sleep—he'd promised his mom!—but it was almost impossible. The lights were too bright, even cocooned in blankets as he was. Footsteps frequently passed by his door despite the late hour. The whole building buzzed with beeping machines and other unseen, but definitely not unheard, electronics. His ears were ringing again.

It was absolutely maddening, and the exact reason his bedroom at home was very dark and well soundproofed. On the worst nights, when the world was. Just. Too. Loud! Igwe would allow him to slip into a sensory tank and just float in The Black until everything made sense again. In return, Izuku watched the shop whenever Igwe vanished to do whatever disgraced neuroscience professors vanish to do.

Izuku growled, rolled over, and smashed his pillow over his head to block out the sound of someone frantically whispering in the hallway. The raw skin of his freshly healed shoulder didn't appreciate the sudden movement and twinged in pain. He shot up in bed with a hiss, sending the pillow flying into the door. Izuku sighed and begrudgingly rolled out of bed to reclaim his pillow.

"Shhh Chicken, you're good, you're good. We're almost there," a familiar voice whispered as a hunched shadow of a man passed across the door. "So close, Chunky. We'll pop in on Shouta real fast, let you do your thing, then head right back home, ya dig?" A low, guttural growl echoed through the air. "Shh! You'll get us caught!"

Intrigued, Izuku silently eased the door open and peaked out. Someone with long blond hair was sneaking down the hall, struggling to carry what looked like a large pet taxi.  _ Something _ inside growled, the sound echoing unnaturally in the empty hallway. 

"Oh cooome ooon Kitten…"

The voice finally clicked. "Yamada-sensei?"

The blond spun in place, sending the pet carrier out wide and causing the animal inside to yowl in displeasure. "Midoriya!" Both of them flinched at the loud yell. "Whatcha doin' lil listener," his teacher whispered once it became clear no one was coming to investigate the ruckus. 

"I couldn't sleep and overheard…" Izuku trailed off, unsure how to describe the mess he'd heard. It was beyond weird to see his teacher in baggy sweatshirt and jeans rather than his hero ensemble. 

Yamada looked just as uncomfortable as his student. "Yeah…" Another growl broke the awkward silence. "So kid, how 'bout we keep this," he slightly lifted his hand holding the carrier, "secret and I'll let you come check in on Shouta. Deal?"

Izuku perked up. "Aizawa-sensei is here?!"

Yamada nodded and gestured down the hall. "We have to sneak though, okay?" Izuku practically gave himself a headache with the speed of his nodding. The blond put his index finger up to his mouth, winked when Izuku copied him, and then led him away. 

They sneaked past several darkened rooms before stopping by one with an odd card scanner bolted over the knob. Yamada shoved the pet carrier at Izuku, who almost buckled under the sudden weight, while he frantically dug through his pockets.

"Finally," he hissed when he managed to find his hero license and slide it through the reader. There was a loud click of the lock disengaging and Yamada breezed through the door. Izuku raced after him, making the mystery creature in the carrier hit the side with a yowl. 

Aizawa looked absolutely  _ wrecked _ . He was almost completely covered in bandages and gauze. Izuku gulped as he realized Aizawa’s head and eyes were wrapped the thickest. Mottled black and blue slips of skin peaked out between the white strips. The most striking, however, were his broken arms tractioned up in the air. Izuku carefully stepped up next to the bed. "Is...is he going to be okay?"

Yamada dropped a hand to his shoulder and tugged his student into a side hug. "He's going to be fine."

"Nomu  _ destroyed _ his arms." Izuku shuttered as he remembered the sound of splintering bone. 

"They've already operated twice. Nothing more to do now but let him heal." 

"Can Recovery Girl help?" 

Yamada shook his head slowly. "Her quirk uses your own stamina to heal."

"And he's already so tired all the time."

"Which is whyyyyy we are here!" Izuku giggled as a grown man, a pro hero, and his English teacher did a wild jig that ended with finger guns pointed his way. 

"At the hospital?"

"Nope!" Yamada said while bopping his nose. The man leaned in and heaved the pet carrier out of Izuku’s arms. "Introducing! The bold! The beautiful! The mysterious!" He unlatched the door and threw it open with flair to match his announcer voice. "Makkuro!"

Nothing appeared from out of the darkness. 

"Oh come on," Yamada muttered while jiggling the cage a bit, "I didn't even call you fat this time." There was a low growl of annoyance and then the biggest cat Izuku had ever seen sauntered out of the carrier and onto the hospital bed. It was massive, longer than the length of Aizawa’s torso not including the long tail, with very long black fur and a regal looking face. 

Izuku snorted. "Makkuro, huh?"

Yamada chuckled and eyed his own green hair. "Whatever you say Midori-ya." 

_ "So you're Midoriya,"  _ Izuku shivered as Shigaraki’s voice slithered through his mind.  _ "Name’s a bit obvious, but we can change that." _

Izuku swallowed around the sudden pressure at his throat. "So, uh, why sneak a cat into the hospital?" Makkuro let out a tiny, high pitched meow, which was completely at odds with the large size and previous low growls. 

Yamada chucked and lightly pet the cat on their massive head. "This pretty lady is special; she has a healing quirk." The cat hopped up on Aizawa’s chest and settled down, covering the man from chin to thigh in black fur. Despite the considerable weight pushing on his injuries, the teacher remained as still as a corpse. Izuku felt sick at the sight. 

A low rumble started up as Yamada ran a hand through Makkuro's long silky hair. The air around the bed took on a soft red glow, as if someone had kicked on a heater. Izuku's eyes slid closed as he was hit with a wave of calm. 

"You can pet her, you know." His teacher’s voice was low and sounded far away. "She's a sweet little chunky kitten. Plus, her quirk only works when she's purring." 

"Animals don't like me," he murmured while fighting the sudden exhaustion pulling at his limbs. 

Yamada continued to pet Makkuro as both the glow and the purring grew to fill the room. "Nah, she's not a normal cat. She loves everyone." Izuku stumbled into the chair next to the bed, collapsing into a heap as the rumbles overtook his thoughts. "She's also really good at putting people to sleep," his teacher continued.

"That's...that's so cool…" Izuku slurred. His head dropped forward onto the table next to the bed. 

Yamada chuckled and reached over to ruffle his hair. "Get some rest lil listener." 

———————

Izuku cradled the thermos to his chest as he peered into the classroom. Almost everyone was already seated and chatting with their neighbor, but he could see his classmates glancing at his own empty seat and looking away confused. Shinso had even forgone his pre-class nap in order to watch for him! 

The whole morning had been strategically planned out by Izuku and his mother in order to dodge as much uncomfortable questioning as possible. If he had simply waltzed into class like normal, Izuku was sure to be dogpilled by classmates for hours. Definitely something to avoid. 

Step One: Leave home late in order to avoid meeting with anyone during travel. 

Step Two: Enter the classroom right before the bell rings in order to limit the amount of time people could question him. 

Step Three: Wait for a distraction to place Inko’ famous Knockout coffee, which was a bestseller with on-call doctors and nurses, on Aizawa’s desk. (There was no way the man determined enough to fight villains with two shattered arms wasn’t going to drag himself into work immediately after said shattering.)

Step Four: Slip into his seat when everyone was distracted by their teacher’s entrance. 

Step Five: Pretend last week never happened and get on with his life.

It was a simple plan, but one that depended on luck. Luck that had seemingly abandoned him, as everyone was sure to notice Izuku slink in and Aizawa was nowhere in sight to serve as a distraction. ‘I could shift, but that’ll just draw even more attention.’

Suddenly, Iida shot right by him and entered the class without bothering to close the door. Izuku slipped inside behind him as the class president startled to jerk his hands wildly. “Good morning everyone! Homeroom is about to begin! Get to your seats!” 

Izuku was able to place the thermos onto the podium behind Iida’s back without him noticing he was there. Just as he was formulating a plan to sneak to his desk, Sero’s voice rang out. “We are sitting. You and Midoriya are the only ones up.” Iida spun around but Izuku was faster, ducking around his right side as he turned left to see him. Iida gaped at the empty air behind him, mouth open in preparation of a scolding, as Izuku slid easily into his chair. Iida whipped back around to call out Sero’s trick, but stuttered when he saw that his friend was actually in attendance. 

The door slammed open, startling the class. “Iida, take your seat before I mark you tardy.” 

“Yes Aizawa-sensei!” Iida yelled, but froze in place as the teacher wobbled into the classroom. "Are you sure you shouldn't still be in the hospital?"

"Yeah sensei, you don't look too well." 

"What happened to his face?!"

Aizawa glared out at his students, the effect only enhanced by the thick bandages that completely hid the right side of his face. "My welfare isn't important." He stumbled over to the podium and collapsed back into the stool with a sigh. He eyed the thermos before him; he could smell the heavenly caffeine, but given his casted arms, he'd be far more likely to dump it on himself rather than actually drink any. And he wasn't about to embarrass himself like that in front of twenty teenagers. 

"Surely you could take one day off," Iida started. "A substitute teacher—"

Aizawa cut him off. "Your fight is far from over." The tension in the air suddenly skyrocketed and the teacher fought the smirk off his face. "UA's Sports Festival is fast approaching!" The class fell over themselves in relief, like puppets with cut strings. 

"That's so totally ordinary!" 

Aizawa’s couldn't help the smug satisfaction filling him as he watched the class devolve into chaos. Midoriya practically vibrated in his seat as he gushed about the popularity of the Sports Festival and its importance in getting scouted by heroes. Letting the kid show his intelligence for the whole class while also getting out of teaching the lesson himself. Win-win scenario in his book.

The class whispered back and forth about training for the upcoming events between bits of English vocab and literary analysis. The teachers were all surprisingly lenient of the interruptions and wavering attention spans. 

"Man, maybe we should get attacked more often," Shinso groaned out as he plopped his head down when Eraserhead left the classroom after their final homeroom session for the day. 

"How could you joke about such a thing!" Iida yelled, despite the fact that they were all grouped around the desks together.

Shinso rolled his head and gave Iida a blank look. "I'll personally walk up to Shigaraki himself if it meant Ectoplasm graded our homework on a flat curve again." His white knuckled grip on the desk and shaking hands betrayed his true feelings about the matter however.

Most of the class was ignoring them, too hype about the news of the festival to talk about anything else. Izuku considered himself lucky the focus had been diverted away from the incident at the USJ. He mindlessly fiddled with the scarf his mom whipped around his neck before he escaped the apartment. 

"Shinso…" The group looked over to Uraraka and were surprised by her fierce look. "We're going to do our best!"

"You go ahead and do that," Shinso muttered out, "I'll be over here napping." He cried out in shock as the chair was yanked out from under him. Shinso fell back onto the ground as Uraraka held his chair above them both, eyes burning with passion.

"I'm gonna crush the Sports Festival!!" 

Shinso lifted one lanky arm up in the air. "Woo…" he drawled, sarcasm thick in his voice. 

"Woo!!" 

Izuku laughed and pulled his friend up off the ground. "Come on, let's get home before Aizawa-sensei decides we didn't get enough homework." Shinso groaned, but acquiesced, snatching his bag from under his desk before Uraraka slammed it back into place. 

"Haha...oops?" 

"The fuck you lookin at?!" Bakugo’s loud yell shattered the easy air of the classroom. 

Izuku slipped between his classmates to step up next to his best friend. Before him, the classroom door was thrown open, exposing the crowd in the hall. Students of all classes blocked off their exit. They could wait them out, but why were they all here? Now?

"They're scoping out the competition, idiot," Bakugo growled out, interrupting his thoughts. 

Izuku pouted. "Stop calling me that." 

"Stop thinkin’ out loud then," Kacchan sneered back at him. Red eyes quickly darted back to the crowd in front of them. "Makes sense they'd want a look before the actual fights though. We are the kids that survived a villain attack." 

Izuku took a step back at the reminder, one hand reaching up to scratch at the thin fabric covering the white scars that encircled his neck. Bakugo did the exact opposite and started stomping forward. "Outta the way cannon fodder!"

"Jeez, are all you in Class 1-A such arrogant assholes?" A blond teen said as he stepped out of the crowd, a small smirk on his face. "I'm glad I was placed in 1-B, seeing as it saves me from dealing with you every single day." 

"Yeah," another voice joined in from the back of the crowd. "All everyone's talking about is you!"

"And," the blond continued with a haughty shrug, "Class 1-A didn't even do that well I heard. Two teachers and a student hospitalized," Izuku stiffened as blue eyes zeroed in on his scarf, "what use were you? I bet you just watched while they were brutalized.” 

"The fuck you say?!" Bakugo growled out as he raised his hand to attack, but someone beat him to it. There was a flash of green and then suddenly the blond stumbled back, a bright red handprint blooming on his cheek. A slim hand with green nail polish floated in the air next to him. 

"That is enough Monoma!" Tokage yelled as she pushed her way through the crowd, a calm-looking girl with long vines for hair trailing behind her. "You're taking this stupid class rivalry thing too far!" She reattached her hand to her wrist without a care for the shudder that went through the crowd. Several of them started leaving, looking a bit pale.

“Tokage, why are you defending these assholes?” Monoma asked while cradling his cheek.

The greenette just scoffed. “You’re an embarrassment,” she said while turning to peer over at 1-A. “Don’t listen to that asshole, he’s infected my whole class with his stupid.” 

“While I cannot condone the language,” the other girl said next to her, “I do quite agree with the sentiment.” 

“What the fuck ever,” Bakugo growled out as he shoved his way through the remaining students. “Move outta my way!” 

Izuku shook his head at Kacchan’s violent exit and turned to the Class 1-B students. “Thanks for the save, Tokage.”

“Not a problem,” she said with a wink. “We green hair weirdos gotta stick together, right?” 

“Right!” Izuku agreed with a nod. 

“Speaking of, it’s been awhile since we had a meeting. I brought a new member!” 

Tokage gestured to the girl next to her, who bowed. “Ibara Shiozaki, at your service. I do not know of this club that Togake wishes for me to join, but I am always looking for more opportunities to form bonds of unity with others.” 

“Can I ask you about your quirk?!” Izuku asked, sounding like a kid in a candy shop. Shiozaki just looked at him in mild concern.

“Yes?” 

“Then you’re in,” Tokage said with a laugh. 

Both girls startled when Izuku suddenly spun around to face the classroom. “Tsu!” The frog-girl dropped her bag at his loud shout. “Wanna join the Green Hair Weirdos Club?!” 

A confused ribbit was his only response. The Sports Festival was forgotten for another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makkuro is based off my own gigantic cat:  
> https://ezallaskise.tumblr.com/post/640032914996920320


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally at the Sports Festival! I hope you enjoy my take on it :D!

_A̡͈̖̤̥̞͎̱̝̍͊͑͋͐̂͂̈́͝ͅl̢̨̨̲̣̣͇̠̓̔̇̓͆̀̍ȩ̦͙̺͚̰̉̄̂͂̓̈́͐͜ͅx̨̨̡̛̛͈̬͔̝͇̠͚̺͗̃̓͛̆̒̕͠͠ͅ is going to fight you every step of the way. He’s allergic to failure._

Izuku wrung his dad’s red scarf in his hands as he stood in front of the mirror, arguing back and forth with himself over bringing it or not. He knew everyone would be in the standard PE uniform during the Sports Festival. It was only fair, given the differences between the courses that would be clashing today. 

But the uniforms had open collars. 

Izuku grimaced and jerked his hand down to his side; he’d started scratching at the thick scar stretching around his neck again. Even after weeks of healing and careful application of lotions, the skin remained bone white and rough to the touch where Shigaraki had held him. Sometimes he woke up from dreams of his neck cracking like old concrete and crumbling away. There would always find dried blood under his nails.

“Izu, you’re going to be late.” He startled at his mom’s voice. With one last look at his neck in the mirror, Izuku left the bathroom. His mom stood near the front door and smiled at him, pulling the scarf from his hands with her quirk and very quickly swapping it out with a thermos for Aizawa. 

Inko, who worked at the closest coffee shop to the hospital and supplied most of the medical staff with their caffeine fix, had taken to showing her appreciation for the teacher with her best coffee monstrosity. THe amount of caffeine and sugar packed into the drink really should be illegal. No one’s complained yet. 

“Oh dear,”she giggled, “off in your own head again?” She skillfully looped the red scarf around Izuku’s neck. “What’s got that frown on your face? Worried about your big day?”

“They won’t let me keep it on,” he grumbled while tugging on the cloth.

Inko just smiled and shooed his hands away. “Just for the trip then. It’s your father’s lucky charm after all.” 

“I’m going to make you both proud,” Izuku said, sounding far more confident than he actually felt. 

“Izu, you make us _so_ _proud_ , every single day.” Inko’s smile was wide, even as her eyes grew a bit wet. Izuku could help but match her. “You father and I love you so so much.” He sniffed as his chest grew warm at the encouragement. “But if you wait any longer, you’re going to miss your train.” Inko laughed as the Izuku in front of her turned into black static as he _shifted_ away. Her perfect child, off to show the world how great he could be.

Luckily, Izuku managed to make his train, get through the increased security, find Aizawa asleep in a seemingly random hallway, and make it to the Class 1-A prep room without being late. “Maybe you really are lucky,” Izuku whispered as he carefully placed the scarf in his assigned locker. 

“Who’s lucky?” Uraraka asked as she suddenly appeared next to him. Izuku jumped and instinctively slammed the door shut. 

“N-Nothing! No one!” he stammered while his friend gave him a searching look. Her eyes dipped down to his collar and Izuku could see the very moment she caught sight of his scar. “We should check in with Iida, I’m sure—“

As if summoned, the Class President slammed open the door and strode in. “Is everyone ready? The event is about to begin!”

“Just a moment, I have an announcement.” The students scattered around the prep room grew quiet as they turned to look at Todoroki. The stoic teen stood tall, almost defiant, as the class gave him their attention. “Objectively speaking, I’m stronger than all of you.”

“Oi!” Bakugo yelled as he stood up from the table. “The fuck you say?!”

“If I recall correctly,” Shinso drawled from the corner he shared with Tokoyami, “I’m the one that won our Battle Trial.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ojiro muttered, without his usual anger.

Todoroki ignored them all. “I will beat you all.”

“Hey man, why pick a fight with us right before we go on?” Kirishima laid a hand on Todoroki’s shoulder, but the duel haired teen shook him off. “We’re all on the same side here!”

“I don’t care. I will win.” 

Bakugo growled and stomped towards the two, but a loud buzzer stopped him in his tracks. The warning light above the door had turned on. “Alright people, let’s go!” Iida shuffled them through the door and into their specified entrance hall. The air around them trembled with the students’ nerves and the sheer power of the roaring crowd. 

Izuku took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart. His parents were watching and he’d make them both proud.

———————

Hizashi chuckled as he finally stumbled across Shouta asleep in his usual garish sleeping bag next to the hidden door to the announcer’s booth. It only took one assault by a parent, furious that their child had been knocked out of the Sports Festival early, for UA to isolate and reinforce the booth. It wasn’t at all surprising to find the yellow blob propped up against the wall. The now-familiar thermos sitting innocently next to him on the other hand…

“How did Midoriya even find you here?”

Shouta snorted, breaking his illusion of sleep. “Who even knows how that kid does anything?” 

“Up and at ‘em,” Hizashi grunted out as he hauled his husband up to stand, carefully making sure his still casted arms didn’t catch on the pooling fabric. “You already see Shuzenji?”

“That woman is a sadist.” Shouta stepped to the side as Hizashi effortlessly rolled up the bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Poked and prodded me for an hour before finally letting me go. Refused to finish healing my arms until next week.” 

Hizashi snatched up the thermos and swiped his employee ID card over the hidden door. He didn’t miss his partner’s obvious attempt at dodging their main concern. “What’s the word on the eye?”

Shouta shot him a half glare. The thick white pad of gauze still obscuring the right side of his face was far more frightening than any dirty look he could give. “Said to keep it wrapped up until the arms are good. No quirk use.”

“Weeeell,” Hizashi dragged out as they entered the spacious room, “that’s good for me then. You can’t shut me off mid hype train now!” He plopped down into the chair, carefully set the thermos down in front of Shouta, and then spun the chair around like the child he was. “Should be a great show!”

The man next to him sighed. “Why did I agree to this again?” Shouta very carefully unscrewed the lid off the thermos and pulled out a metal straw from somewhere unseen. He’d gotten quite skilled at navigating the world with the casts dumbing down his motor control.

“Because you love me.” Hizashi flipped the warning light on the console to let everyone know he was going to start. Like his own switch was flipped, Hizashi vanished and Present Mic rose to the surface.

“Hey-o everyone! Make some noise, all you rapid sports fans! Get those cameras read, media hordes! This year we are bringing you some of the hottest performances in UA history! Guaranteed!” He paused a moment to let the crowd rev themselves up. “I’ve only got one question before we start the show: Are you READY?!” The stadium shook as the crowd went absolutely wild. 

Next to him, Shouta sat unaffected by the hype. The teacher leaned forward to catch the straw but stabbed his cheek instead, almost toppling the thermos and spilling coffee all over himself and the very expensive sound equipment. The sudden loss of his depth perception was far more annoying than the casts. “I hate this.”

“Mic’s hot.”

“You wish.”

Present Mic rolled his eyes and reached over to flip off his co-announcer’s microphone. “Please remember this is televised internationally.”

Eraser head grunted in acceptance as he finally managed to catch the straw and start chugging the sugar monstrosity his student had gotten him addicted to. The red warning light flashed three times and then blinked green.

“Everyone put your hands up for the students entering the pitch! First up, you all know them by now! The rising stars who brushed off a villain attack with their steely willpower: Hero Course Class 1-A!” 

The stadium erupted into roars as their students stepped on the green. The reinforced glass surrounding the booth vibrated with the strength of the cheers. Ashido, Bakugo, and surprisingly Asui led the charge onto the field. The more timid students, like Midoriya and Shinso, huddled in the middle of the group, where they were hidden by their more confident classmates’ bulk. 

“With the same amount of talent, not nearly as much screen time, and something to prove, its Hero Course Class 1-B!” 

The cheering was noticeably quieter for the other class. Aizawa could see the displeasure clear on the students’ faces, even this far up. “Harsh much?”

“Gotta play it up for the crowd.” Despite his easy words, Mic’s smile was forced. He clearly didn’t like it any more than they did. “Everyone likes the underdog story.” 

“Next up, General Studies classes, C, D, E! Followed by Support Classes, F, G, and H! And finally, Business classes I, J, and K!”

“I’m already exhausted…”

Ignoring his partner, Mic continued his scripted introduction. “Give it up for all of UA’s first-year combatants!”

“‘Combatants,’ huh,” Shouta snorted, “dramatic much?”

Mic flipped the broadcast from the announcing booth to the field, where Midnight took over. “All for the show,” he replied as he leaned back with a sigh. “Gotta build up all the drama!”

“Gonna bite us in the ass one of these days.” Shouta took a long slurp of his drink as the first year representative was called to the stage. 

“To everyone that thinks they can take me on,” Bakugo said, looking practically feral up on the Jumbotron, “bring it! I’ll crush all of you!”

‘It would be your student that’d call out the entire year, wouldn’t it?’ Hizashi thought with a raised eyebrow.

‘You wanted drama,’ Shouta’s one-eyed glance said. 

“Shut up,” both men said at the same time as the stadium erupted into boos. 

“Without further ado, let’s get started!” The announcement booth remained silent as Midnight retook control of the field. Up until the action actually started, they had very little to do but watch the classes glare at each other and prepare for the first event.

“Think your fave lil listeners will do well?” Hizashi elbowed the chair next to him when Shouta ignored his question for his drink. “Come on man, microphones off! No one will knooooow~”

“Begin!!” Midnight’s announcement cut him off and suddenly Present Mic was back. 

“And we’re off to a racing start!”

“Was that a pun?” 

Mic ignored the jab and turned on his partner’s console. “How about some color commentary, Mr. Mummy Man?” The glare was definitely worth it. “What should we be watching this early in the race?”

“The doorway.”

The starting gate itself really did prove to be an interesting place to watch. A large chunk of students were left frozen in place as Todoroki iced the ground in order to take an early lead. Others, mostly 1-A, cleared it with little difficulties. By the time students began clawing their way through the tunnel and sliding down the track, the front runners made it to the next obstacle.

“Get ready for the Robo Inferno!”

“Must you be so loud?”

Once again, Todoroki cleared the toast easily. He managed to freeze a Zero Pointer in such a way that he cleared the robot and the other students couldn’t use his path to get through. Eraserhead was impressed with the brutal elegance of his attack. Todoroki really was going all out, not pacing himself at all. Bakugo was quick on his tail, followed by Sero and, surprisingly, Tokoyami. Mobility, rather than power, was the true advantage here, as the other students were forced to fight in order to advance. 

The Fall was Support’s chance to shine. Drone cams focused on the students’ unusually loud explanations of their gear. From self-stabilizing exosuits, to a rocket enhanced pogo stick, and various widespread jetpack designs, every one of them was happy to give their sales pitch directly to the cameras. Despite the fact that they were quickly being passed by those actually aiming to win. 

The distinct lack of familiar green bothered Eraserhead though. Midoriya had been completely missing since the start of the race. 

“And the front runners, Todoroki and Bakugo, are putting major distance between the rest of them stuck at The Fall as we finally approach the final barrier! Everyone better treat carefully as—IS THAT A FUCKING SPIDER?!” 

The stadium as a whole flinched as the automatic filter attempted to censor Mic’s quirk-enhanced scream, causing feedback to screech through the speakers. Eraserhead felt his hair rise as he glared at his partner, who looked ready to faint on the spot. “What happened to ‘try and remember this is televised’?!”

“Sho…”Hizashi whispered as he reached out to touch the side of his face, “your eye…”

There was a click as the intercom came to life. “Is there an issue, gentlemen?”

“N-Not at all Nedzu sir!” Hizashi answered as he turned back to the camera feeds in front of him. 

“Good!” The principal’s voice was as pleasant as always and yet, both of them shivered at his tone. 

Present Mic returned as Shouta’s hair fell. “Sorry about that folks, just a bit of technical difficulties. Our front runners have already taken the field, but let me introduce...The Minefield!! Keep those eyes open, our mines don’t pack much of a punch, but they’re loud and flashy enough—“ An absolutely massive explosion cut him off. “What was that?!” 

Shouta leaned forward to look at the speck of green flying through the air. “It’s Midoriya.”

———————

Izuku felt like he was doing pretty well for himself. He’d joined the crushing mass of students trying to force their way through the narrow entryway relatively early. The push and pull of the crowd threatened to send him on a spiral of panic, but the experiences in the lunchroom during the breakin allowed him to keep focused. Changing form was his best bet to get through, but he definitely didn’t want to be stepped on again. And a lift field would only cause more confusion and chaos. 

Funnily enough, despite his declaration of war, it was Todoroki that gave him the opportunity to advance. Izuku leaped as straight up as possible the moment the air rapidly turned frigid. He was able to twist around and _shift_ forms, landing on the shoulders of other students as they were frozen to the ground. Most were too busy trying to yank their feet out of the ice to notice the spider-like form crawling over their heads to freedom. 

Skittering around on all fours as a…

**_M̠͚̦͙͖̻̠̥͔̼̔̉̓͑̎̎͞͝͠͠I̡̨̨͈̗̭͖͔͌̐̂̀̃̾̀̕͘͜͟͡M̨̛̮̗̫̙̳̜͇̳͋͒̾͐͗̚͜͝Ì̭̻͙̰̤̝̦̝̲͊̃̃͋̋͒̕͢͝C͓̜̖͈̟̦͍̤̤̃̾̿̄̅̌̊̐̕͠ͅ_ **

Skittering around on all fours as a mimic made avoiding the robots quite easy. While he might not have near the same stride length as Todoroki, Izuku was much faster than he would be normally. Though his mimic form doesn’t have visible eyes, Izuku is able to see while transformed, even if it is an odd, almost out of body experience for him. The increased field of view allowed him to dodge the metal scrap Todoroki left in his wake. 

Mimics are small, low to the ground, with a central mass and four tentacle-like limbs that had a surprisingly strong grip. This combined low center of gravity and little weight made climbing across the chasm on ropes laughable quick. Whereas other students needed to test the ropes’ strength or balance as they crossed, Izuku could scamper across without stopping . No one noticed him taking the field, speedily crawling across the various ropes with ease, or taking the lead.

Humans very rarely looked down. 

Izuku scuttled into the minefield before everyone else. Bakugo and Todoroki were too busy fighting each other in front of the warning sign to notice his shape on the field. He was small, so as long as he didn’t go too fast, he could easily squeeze through the mines scattered about the field. Maybe he could even finish first without anyone noticing!

“IS THAT A ******* SPIDER?!” Izuku froze as Present Mic’s screech echoed over the field. Someone had finally noticed him and it was probably the worst possible person. 

“Deku you sneaky little shit!” Nope, Bakugo was definitely soooo much worse than his teacher. 

Two shadows passed overhead as Todoroki and Bakugo stopped fighting long enough to catch up and overtake Izuku. He definitely couldn’t keep up with them as a mimic. By the time Izuku managed to _shift_ back into himself, his two classmates were torpedoing towards the end of the field. Izuku joined the race, carefully _shifting_ to the small gaps between mines and leaving staticky clones zigzagging across the field in his wake. 

Todoroki managed to pull ahead of Bakugo when he misfired an explosion, causing a mine to send him stumbling out of the air. Izuku used his quirk to yank his childhood friend to the side as pink sparkles erupted out of the ground. The two just barely managed to stay upright and not step on any more mines. 

Izuku really wanted to win, but Todoroki’s cold indifference to their entire class made his chest _burn_. So why not take him out? While Bakugo reclaimed his spot in the air, Izuku stumbled to a stop and raised his hand as he focused on the running boy. Todoroki stumbled as his ankle was yanked out from under him. Bakugo practically howled as he took first place. 

Todoroki pushed himself back up and swept a long glacier of ice backwards at Izuku before returning to the race. The green-haired teen scrambled back, attempting to see past the ice to _shift_ forward, but stumbled as his foot was frozen to the ground. A scream was torn from his throat as Izuku fell flat on his back, ankle twisted painfully as his foot stayed firmly stuck in the ice.

There was a single moment of peace when Izuku just laid there on the ground, ankle radiating pain, where he wondered what else could possibly go wrong.

And then the mines beneath him gave an ominous click. 

Izuku was quite sure he passed out the exact same moment as the mines exploded. He went from the ground and into the air in a huge flash of light and bright pink glitter without quite comprehending what had happened. The explosion sent him flying away from the finish line. There was no time to think, no time to focus, only the wind in his hair and the sinking suspicion that this would be the end of everything.

“I got you, kero!” Something wrapped around his waist and yanked Izuku right out of the air. He landed in Tsu’s arms with a loud grunt and almost took the smaller girl down to the ground with him. She stumbled with his weight, but managed to stay upright. 

Tsu was helping him stand when Uraraka ran up next to them. “That was such a good catch!” 

“It wasn’t anything special,” the froggy girl said, blush growing on her cheeks. 

Izuku was almost sick as his brain rattled nauseatingly around inside his skull. His ankle _ached_. “I nominate you for Club President,” he groaned out. 

Uraraka took his weight and waved Tsu forward. “I got him, you go on ahead.” The greenette looked torn between joining the students starting to pass them for the finish line and helping her friends. “Tsu, go!” She gave the two one final conflicted look, before leaping away. 

“You should just leave me.” 

“Not gonna happen!” Uraraka hiked his arm over her shoulder and the two hobbled their way across the field. Students veered around the two, not even stopping to offer help as they made their way towards the finish line.

Izuku stumbled as they passed the pockmarked ground where Todoroki had blown him up. The icy muddy slush coating the ground made the terrain even more difficult to navigate. Suddenly, someone yanked him back upright and took some weight off Uraraka.

“Brings back memories, yeah?” Shinso smirked as the group of three started to catch up to the other students. 

“Shoes on the other foot now,” Uraraka panted out with her own smile.

“Or not,” Shinso answered, flicking his head down to Izuku’s missing shoe. Izuku’s ankle was rapidly swelling and turning a gross purple color. He stayed quiet between the two, focusing all of his energy on staying upright and not bringing the whole group down into a pile. 

“They’ve been fighting since the beginning, but which of them is going to finally cross the finish line first?!” Present Mic’s voice echoed through the air as the three of them finally got to the end of the minefield. Only the long final stretch of road stood between them and the finish line. “Our winner is…Shoto Todoroki!” Kacchan’s roar of rage echoed almost as loud as the cheering crowd. 

“I...can’t believe...he beat Bakugo!” Uraraka panted out.

“I really wanted him to lose after that whole declaration of war bs.”

Izuku was silent through it all. The only thing greater than the pain radiating out of his ankle was the burning rage choking the breath right out of him. Present Mic continued to list off students as they crossed the line, each name feeling like another log tossed onto the fire growing in his chest. He’d been so close to winning! 

The three of them stumbled to a stop as they finally entered the stadium, panting and trying to remain upright after their mad dash through the final hallway. 

“A great show of comradery from 1-A as Shinso, Midoriya, and Uraraka make it to the end! What place did they get? That’s Midnight’s problem to figure out!!”

“Do you ever shut up?”

Tsu and Shiozaki joined their group, offering congratulations and offers to help him to the first aid stand, but Izuku could only focus on Todoroki. As if sensing the eyes burning into his back, the first place winner turned to him. Blue-grey met green. His ankle throbbed in pace with the heat in his heart as Kacchan’s confident words echoed in the back of his mind.

Izuku was going to absolutely _crush_ Todoroki.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I had to draw out a play-by-play just to keep everything straight during the Cavalry Battle. Hopefully it all makes sense!

_ I keep having this...dream. I’m just staring into The Black, between the stars. There’s something there, I know there is. I just can’t see it. But it sees me. I can feel it... _ **_hate_ ** _ us. _

Thirtieth place. Izuku  _ burned _ as he stared up at the ranks rapidly filling up on the screen. He’d been in first! Granted, he’d been overtaken by both Bakugo and Todoroki almost as soon as they entered the final obstacle, but the point still stands. He’d been in  _ first  _ and then Todoroki blew him up, wrecked his ankle, and left him limping to thirtieth place. 

Worst of all, Todoroki made him drag his friends down with him. 

Uraraka had been with Tsu, who’d finished twelfth. Instead of continuing on without him, the brunette stayed and landed all the way back at 28th. Shinso would have definitely finished higher if he hadn’t also hobbled himself by carrying him. Izuku had been so close to victory he could almost  _ taste it _ . And Todoroki dragged him down with a simple wave of a hand. It’d been so easy for him to stomp on all of their dreams!

Izuku seethed as he sat on the grass between his friends. He stretched his leg out, carefully testing his dark purple joint’s range of motion. Luckily enough, his ankle wasn’t too swollen to move, even if the joint felt weirdly disconnected from the rest of his leg. His mom was going to freak.

“Only the top forty-two from this round will move on, and that final spot has been filled!” Midnight threw her arms out in celebration as the last blank box on the board filled with a name Izuku didn’t recognize. The whole group jumped as the massive gate into the stadium slammed closed. “Say hello to our qualifying competitors!!” 

The answering roar of the crowd was even louder than when they first entered the pitch and yet, Izuku felt none of the need to hide that had consumed him back then. He had only rage. Was this how Kacchan felt all the time?

“Now, on to the second event! Will your wildest fantasies come true or will it be your worst nightmare?!” Midnight gestured at the board with her flogger. “The wheel will decide your fate! Prepare yourselves for... the Cavalry Battle!!”

Izuku’s attention waxed and waned as the teacher explained the rules of the game. It was pretty much adapted straight from the schoolyard, nothing really new that he should pay any attention to. Besides, Uraraka and Shinso would clue him in to anything important he missed. Probably. Maybe. Instead, he focused on Todoroki. The dual-haired teen stood tall, just as blank-faced as he ever was. As if today was just another day. As if he hadn’t permanently damaged his ankle. As if he hadn’t  _ stolen his win! _

“And the point value assigned to our illustrious first place winner? Ten million!!” All forty of them joined Izuku in glaring at Todoroki, who looked unfazed by the attention. “It’s survival of the fittest, a chance for those at the bottom to overthrow the top!!”

Shinso tapped him lightly in the side with his elbow. “We are definitely taking him down a peg, right?” 

“Yessss,” Uraraka hissed on Izuku’s other side. “We’ll knock that rich boy right out the competition!” 

“Well, he did want a war.” All three of them smirked in unison. “So why not give him one?”

“Maliciously attacking another team will get you kicked right out!” Uraraka let out a soft boo that made the students around them chuckle. “Quirks are allowed,” Midnight continued, ignoring or unaware of the interruption, “but this is still a cavalry battle! We will be watching everyone oh so closely~”

“I’ve got a plan,” Izuku murmured. 

Shinso interrupted with a snort, “Of course you do.” 

“We need someone else to join us though,” he continued over him. “Someone with flexibility and reach. Plus power; none of us are packing much of that.” 

A loud buzzer went off as a fifteen minute timer overtook the screen. Midnight left the stage as students began to collect into groups. Izuku wasn’t too surprised when she crouched down in front of their group. “Tell me the truth Midoriya.” She paused to catch his eye. “Are you well enough to continue? This looks pretty nasty,” she said while pointing at his dark purple ankle. 

“I’m fine Midnight-sensei.” She gave him a flat look. “Fine enough to continue.” 

Uraraka flashed a thumbs up at their teacher. “We’ll keep a close eye on him! Promise!”

“Midoriya’s our rider, he won’t even touch the ground,” Shinso added. 

Midnight didn’t seem swayed, but she stood back up with a sigh. “If at any point I believe you’ve made your injury worse, I’m pulling you from the match and marching you straight to Recovery Girl. Got it?”

“Yes Midnight-sensei!” the three of them chorused. Their teacher nodded once and turned away, touching the wireless headset tucked behind her ear. Relaying his decision to the other staff members, probably. 

Izuku looked across the field, eyeing the teams starting to form and those students that were still untethered. Despite the fact that he was the largest target, Todoroki had already formed a team with Yaoyorozu, Iida, and Kaminari. Powerful and well-rounded. Kacchan was angrily trying to shove his way through the students crowding him until Kirishima pulled him towards Sero and Ashido. A team made for great maneuverability and the one person more suited to handle Explosion better than Izuku. 

“Someone powerful,” he muttered to himself, “with a long reach…” He caught sight of Shiozaki. Her quirk would be perfect! Except she was already standing with Tokage, both looking confused at a familiar pink-haired girl ranting in front of them. “Hatsume?”

A shadow covered their group, distracting Izuku from his search. He looked up to see Tokoyami standing with an unknown student, probably the one that placed last. Even if Tokage and Shiozaki hadn’t outright told them about their 2-B classmates, the two tended to complain about their antics often enough during club meetings for Izuku to recognize their names.

“I’m Satoshi Okabe of Class 1-I,” the fellow green-haired student introduced himself. “Here.” Izuku scrambled in place as the newcomer thrust a roll of bandages at him. “My quirk told me I’d need these, so I asked that creation student to make them. I’m sure they’re for you.”

“You quirk?” Shinso asked as he took the roll from Izuku’s bumbling hands and began expertly wrapping up his ankle. 

“Intuition! It gives me gut feelings about things, even if I don’t know what about. It’s never been wrong before.” 

“That sounds like cheating,” Uraraka grumbled. 

Okabe just pushed up his glasses with a smile. “So does the hero course getting so much extra training before this festival.” 

Izuku flexed his foot as Shinso secured the crisscrossing bandages with a neat tuck. “Perfect for business decisions.”

“Exactly! My quirk told me to introduce myself to you and bring bandages, which I did, even though I’m not sure how this will benefit me. But I listened anyway.”

“If you two want in on our team, we’re full up.”

“Oh no,” Okabe shook his head at Shinso’s comment. “I’m not competing this round, I only passed in order to come talk to you. This guy though,” he pointed over to Tokoyami, “is prefect for your team.”

“Let me guess,” Uraraka said as she leaned forward, “your quirk says so?”

Izuku gasped as his plan clicked into place in his mind. “Yes! Tokoyami, you are perfect! Join us! I have a plan and with Dark Shadow, we’d have the reach we’d need to complete it! You probably won’t even need to attack!” 

Tokoyami, who had stood as still as a statue as Okabe dragged him across the field without even stopping to explain or introduce himself, nodded once in agreement. “It seems that we are destined to join forces in order to defeat our enemies.” He crossed his arms while Dark Shadow exploded out of his back and started cawing loudly about fate. “We will join you,” Tokoyami said, somehow managing to look completely serious as his quirk squawked like a cartoon bird.

The warning buzzer echoed through the stadium as the timer reached its final two minute countdown. Shinso and Uraraka heaved Izuku up off the ground and helped support his weight as they headed towards the field. Tokoyami followed at a sedate pace as his quirk shot forward to hover over the other three, still cackling like a madlad. 

“Okabe!” Izuku yelled backwards at the retreating business student. “Wanna join my club?”

———————

Growing up as the youngest child of a top ranked hero, second only to All Might himself, meant Shouto had very thick skin. It wasn’t just the constant physical ‘training’ Endeavor put him through. His family was also plagued by the media hounds looking for a quick paycheck. His mother’s breakdown, his own injury, his siblings’ refusal to join the family business,  Touya’s death, and every single civil suit raised against Endeavor meant reporters flocking to the Todoroki house. Shouto doesn’t even bother keeping count of the number of stalkers he’s had since birth. 

Sometimes staying inside with  _ Him _ was preferable to braving the outside with  _ them _ . 

Shouto had been enrolled in online schooling as long as he could remember. Whether it was to protect Endeavor’s secret or his own sanity, he didn’t  want to know. The scant hours of socialization he was allowed were spent inside the agency. And even then the sidekicks treated him as ‘the boss’s kid’ rather than just ‘a kid’. Anytime he left the safety of his own room in the house, someone was always watching, always assessing, always scrutinizing. 

Shouto didn’t know why he thought UA would be any different. Endeavor’s driver watched him through the mirror on the way to school. Students watched him in the halls, even when he just wanted to use the restroom. The teachers watched him from the front of the classroom, always expecting more from him. He grew a thick skin to deal with all of the eyes. 

Midoriya’s gaze  _ burned _ in a way that not even an enraged Endeavor ever accomplished. Shouto felt his hate as Present Mic announced his finish and turned to meet those eyes. Something like guilt twinged in his chest at the sight of his ruined ankle but Shouto forced the feeling, and his eyes, away. His classmate had attacked him first by tripping him in the minefield. Midoriya’s quirk relied on a clear line of sight. Therefore, it was only logical to throw up a wall of ice to block him and prevent him from doing it again. Shouto hadn’t intended to catch his foot or cause such damage.

_ Not even He has gone so far to break bones. _

It didn’t matter. Midoriya was obviously fine enough to continue on if the teachers weren’t pulling him out. 

_ No one ever pulled you out.  _

It didn’t matter! He would win this whole competition without using His quirk. To finally prove he could be Number One with his mother’s cherished ice. Shouto would do anything to complete his goal.

_ Like father, like son. _

“Todoroki,” Shouto blinked at Yaoyorozu’s sudden arrival. “I believe we would make a good team.” He looked past her at the clock ticking down on the screen. Apparently he’d missed the instructions while lost in thought.

“You’re quirk is flexible enough to handle most situations.” 

Yaoyorozu nodded, as if he’d said something profound, rather than the first thing that came to mind. “You could freeze everyone to the ground as you did before.”

A surprising number of people saw right through it. We need something to distract them first.”

“Yo, yo, yo!” Kaminari yelled as he joined their group. “Did I hear you say distract? Let’s team up! Nothing’s more shocking than me!” His grin was as bright as the sparks dancing in his palm.

“If you would allow it, I would also like to join.” Iida looked grim as he walked up. “I made a terrible showing in the last event, but I swear I will do my absolute best. Everyone will be coming for you Todoroki, you need my speed.”

Shouto looked at his three classmates and nodded. “Kaminari will take left and keep enemies away with your electricity. Yaoyorozu, you take the right side and provide insulation.”

“Aww yeah! Just like at the USJ!!”

“Iida, you take the front.” Kaminari practically drooped when Shouto ignored his interruption, while Yaoyorozu comforted him with a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll be the rider, which will give me free room to use my ice to both attack and defend.”

“And your fire?” Iida questioned. “Will you be using that as well?”

“No,” Shouto looked out over the cheering crowd, picking out Endeavor in an instant. “I refuse to use His fire.”

Anything more his teammates may have wanted to say was drowned out by the warning buzzer. Shouta led them towards one end of the pitch, annoyingly aware of every single eye on him. It wasn’t until he traded off his shoes for a headband from a nearby bot that he realized why: 10,000,440 emblazoned in bright red. The comically large number looked ridiculous wrapped around his head. 

The eyes followed them through the final countdown, but Todoroki could only focus on Midoriya glaring at him from across the field. His classmate smirked before saying something to the rest of his team. The other groups were frothing at the mouth for their points, but Team Midoriya would be the ones to watch out for. There was blood in the air. 

“Iida, run us straight into the center.” 

“But—”

“Begin!!” Midnight’s call had barely finished echoing through the speakers when Iida shot them forward. Behind them, two teams crashed into each other right where they had stood. The four 1-B students fell into a messy pile of swinging limbs and loud swears in English. 

“Oi! Icy-Hot!” Shouto jerked back at the loud scream and fumbled as Bakugo sailed through the sky towards them. “That shit’s mine!” Without needing any direction, Yaoyorozu created a thick slab of metal between the blond and her team. Bakugo swore as he attempted to fly around it, and then swore even louder as tape snapped him backwards. 

“Bakugo has left his team!” Present Mic screamed out over the roaring crowd. “Is that even allowed?”

Midnight grinned in delight at their student’s ingenuity. “I’ll allow it as he never touched the ground!”

“Jeez,” Kaminari complained as he leaned around to look back at Bakugo’s team in jealousy, “how’s that fair?”

"We’ve got other things to worry about! We are surrounded!” While pushing into the middle of the field was the best way to prevent teams from trapping them into a corner, it had also given the students that started on the other side of the field a chance to catch up. And opened them up to a war on all fronts. Which was exactly what Shouto wanted. 

“Yaoyorozu! Kaminari!” 

“Yeah let’s go!!” Kaminari yelled as the air around him suddenly spiked with the smell of ozone. Jiro broke off with a curse and yanked her team off to the side as memories of fighting in the USJ came to mind. She had first hand knowledge of that electricity and really didn't want to deal with it again.

Shouto reached behind him and yanked the thick sheet of insulation around to protect himself and Iida just as light arced around their blond teammate and stunned the students around them. He used that distraction to freeze the feet of the horses to the ground, making sure to encase them up to the knees. No need to repeat Midoriya’s injury en masse. 

“Well look at that! Frontrunner Todoroki isn’t willing to just defend, but also attack! He stopped almost half the competitors right in their tracks!!”

“But only after Kaminari had immobilized them using his electricity. In the obstacle course, he was surprised by how many people managed to avoid his trap.” Shouto scowled as his teacher made his earlier mistake obvious to everyone else. “He’s evolving his strategy.” Shouto didn’t need to  _ evolve _ , he was strong enough to win on ice alone. 

He yanked the headbands from the frozen squads as Iida pushed them forward out of the ice trap and into the empty space of the other side of the field. To their right, Bakugo was facing off with 1-B’s own obnoxious blond. Shouto snorted as his classmate landed face-first into seemingly nothing. Those two deserved each other. 

A flash of green caught his eye and Shouto turned, expecting Midoriya had finally made his move. Instead a disembodied hand flew straight towards his face, aiming for the headband. He barely managed to smack it out of the sky and catch it in a thin stalagmite of ice. “Aww boo, I wanted that to work.” Iida whipped them around to see three Class 1-B and the one remaining Support students headed their way. Two high value headbands decorated the greenette’s neck. “Mido told me you’d be an issue.” 

At the mention of the other green-haired teen, Shouto looked around for his team. There was only empty space around them as Bakugo chased Monoma’s team away from them down the pitch. “Midoriya is teaming up with the other classes? Can’t he compete with his own power?” The two green members of the team in front glared at him. Surprisingly, the pinkette joined as well. 

“It’s my baby’s turn to shine!” A spring-loaded claw hand shot towards them from the bulky pack strapped to the pinkette’s back. It was much faster than the hand, but Shouto managed to catch it the same as he had before. “Not done!” The claw, which had it’s joints frozen in mid-air, suddenly exploded out from the base, careening through the air towards his head. Iida pushed them backwards as Yaoyorozu created a shield to catch the projectile. Four metal tips broke through the jagged rock, barely an inch from stabbing Shouto in the face.

“Are you trying to kill us?!” Kaminari yelled as he scrambled to keep up with the two taller students. 

“Whoops,” the pink one chuckled, “seems I need to do a little bit of adjustment.” Shouto didn’t bother answering her and simply sent ice their way. Vines shot up from the ground and protected them as ice grew to wholly encase their team. Their points were now out of Shouto’s reach, but at least he didn't have to worry about any more long ranged attacks. 

The thing about always being aware of the eyes on your back, of learning to ignore them in order to protect your own sanity, is sometimes, that awareness is the only thing that will save your life. Or your headband in a childhood game turned not-quite blood-sport. Shouto had made the mistake of  _ forgetting about Midoriya _ . 

There wasn’t even a tell-tale flash of green, there was simply empty air and then there was Midoriya. He landed on their team before any of them could react, stepping on Iida’s back and reaching to yank the headband off Shouto’s head. The dual-haired rider jerked back by the sudden inexplicable fear that filled him at the dark look in those green-white eyes. Fire instinctually flickered to life on his left arm, which was raised to protect his head. 

Midoriya smacked his arm away, uncaring of the burn darkening on his skin, and grabbed ahold of the headband with his other hand. Too fast for anyone to react, he managed to yank it off. At almost the exact same moment, Kaminari cried out as Shouto elbowed him in the face, causing him to spark off light that blinded the five of them. Without being able to see, or really needing to, Yaoyorozu shot a pole from her upper shoulder, smacking who she assumed was Midoriya in the chest and off of their team.

“Get itt, get it, get it!” Uraraka yelled excitedly, voice clearly recognizable even if she wasn’t visible yet. 

Fluttering cloth was the first thing that Shouto could see as he blinked the spots out of his vision. He grabbed the falling headband with one hand and shot a wall of ice between their two teams with the other. Just in time, as Dark Shadow reeled back towards Tokoyami from where he was moving to attack. 

“We’ve got to move!” Iida grunted and shifted into another gear, yanking their team into the empty corner of the field. He huffed and puffed as Todoroki created a massive ice shelf to block off the rest of the teams scrambling for points. 

“There’s only a couple minutes left,” Shouto grunted out as he put the headband on his head. “We just have to keep everyone else out.”

Yaoyorozu sighed but nodded in agreement. “You should probably flip and shuffle those around, to hide them in case they get through again.” 

Shouto shook his head and flexed his left hand. The joint twinged from where it had been knocked away. “No one is breaking through my ice.” 

“But—” A massive explosion cut her off. Apparently Bakugo had finished his fight with the other blond and turned his red eyes to them. Another loud boom shook the air and part of the wall cracked as the assault continued. 

“Todoroki…” Kaminari tried to shuffle back as Bakugo’s explosions grew louder and louder, but they were on the edge of the field. 

Shouto ignored their concern and sent another wave of ice to reinforce the crackling wall. Slivers of twinkling cold flew into the air as the explosions counted down with the timer and the roaring crowd. 

“Three!” Sunlight poured through the hole as the blond finally broke through the wall.

“Two!” Bakugo launched himself towards them as Yaoyorozu started to make another sheet of insulation and Kaminari readied his own attack.

“One!” Iida stumbled over his feet in exhaustion, trying to buy his teammates the time and space needed to defend themselves from Bakugo’s rage.

“Time’s Up!!” Team Todoroki sighed in relief as Bakugo fell flat on his face with a roar of rage. “And with that pulse-pounding finale, the second round is officially over!!” 

Shouto cursed as he jumped off his teammate’s joined hands. He had sworn to beat every single obstacle thrown his way with only his ice. And then the moment it meant the most, His fire had erupted from his arm without a thought. Instinctually. As if it had been the only way to defend himself. As if all of the pain and effort Shouto has put in to deny Endeavor’s greatest wish meant nothing. 

He’d won, but at the cost of his vow.  _ And it was all Midoriya’s fault.  _

“Now let’s see who was paying attention and take a look at who our top teams are!” Shouto ignored Present Mic’s enthusiasm as he looked for Midoriya across the melting ice rapidly clearing from the field. His iconic green hair was nowhere to be seen. “In first place: Team Midoriya!!” 

Everyone, even Bakugo still splayed out on the ground, snapped up to look at the scoreboard. There, at the top of the chart, stood Team Midoriya with 10,000,440 points. 

“But we still have the headband!” Kaminari yelled, looking over at Midnight. Bakugo started cackling loudly as the rest of his team looked on confused. 

She smirked and pointed to the side. “Do you?” They followed her finger to Team Midoriya, where Uraraka, Shinso, and Tokoyami stood off to the side. Between them, Dark Shadow cawed his victory to the sky, the ten million headband strapped proudly to his forehead. 

“Then what…?” Shouto reached for the headband wrapped around his own head, but was shoved backwards as the cloth launched itself into the air. Shouto fell in a clumsy heap as white flickered to black static midair, then grew out into Midoriya, who landed feet first on the ground. He steadied himself on one foot, the other a sickening molted purple barely covered in bandages. 

“When did he…?” Yaoyorozu muttered while Kaminari sputtered. 

Iida collapsed to the ground in anguish. “I fell for it again!” 

Shouto could only stare dumbly as his classmate hobbled towards his team. “I never touched the ground, Midnight-sensei.”

“That is correct! Victory goes to Team Midoriya!!” There were an unequal number of cheers and boos from the crowd as the announcer supported the win. Most seemed to feel that he’s cheated, that the win should have gone to Todoroki, but Midoriya seemed to ignore them all. If only Shouto could ignore the venomous feeling growing in his chest. 

“In second place: Team Bakugo!” Despite his loss of first place, the blond was already off the ground and stalking towards Team Midoriya, switching between loudly screaming about his friend stealing his moves and cackling about the shocked look on ‘Half-n-Half’s’ face. 

“Third place: Team Tokage!” The green haired girls that had attacked them before joined Team Midoriya and Team Bakugo with smiles on their faces. He just felt empty at the sight of their easy comradery. 

“And in a surprising twist, bringing up the rear is Team Todoroki!” Shouto slumped down to lay flat on the ground. Nothing mattered to him at that moment. It was bad enough that he’d broken his vow to win. And now that it turned out that he’d broken his vow  _ and still lost _ , it was even worse. He’d done everything in his power to outcompete all of the other students, and yet that meant absolutely nothing in the face of Midoriya’s trickery. 

His father was probably reveling in his failure. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me trying to keep track of twelve teams and making sure the point rankings actually makes sense: The risk was calculated, but man am I bad at math.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a wild ride for this one, I hope everyone enjoys! This chapter directly references events in previous installments in the series.

_ Did we make that in one of the labs? _

“Mmmm-wah! There you go,” Recovery Girl said as she leaned back in her chair. Izuku sighed in relief as the pain and tightness that gripped his ankle faded away. He copied the nurse, leaning back in the chair that Shinso and Bakugo tossed him into before leaving for lunch. His oldest friend looked angry to need the help carrying him. “That’s as healed as it’s going to get.”

“Thank you, Recovery Girl!” Izuku smiled as he wiggled the foot around, happy that he could do so without any more pain. “It feels so much better. Your quirk’s really amazing!”

Her smile was surprisingly brittle. “You’re very welcome, dearie. You should rest as much as possible the next couple of days; no strenuous activities, weight training, or sharp movements or you’ll undo all of my hard work.” She paused for a moment, as if weighing her next words carefully. “In my professional opinion, you should consider dropping out of the competition.”

“No!” Izuku yelled as he jerked upright. A small leathery hand with a surprisingly strong grip kept him from yanking his foot off the short exam table between them. “I have to keep gong!” The fire in his chest that was the sheer  _ need _ to beat Todoroki had banked down to embers after his win in the second round, but his parents were watching and he had to make them proud. That was far more important than the exhaustion creeping up his limbs from the rapid healing session.

Recovery Girl harrumphed as she slowly rotated his foot, watching for any hint of tension or pain he may have caused in his outburst. “Ankle injuries are rife with long term consequences,” she explained while wrapping a cross-crossing support brace around his foot. “The ligaments have been unnaturally stretched far beyond anything they evolved to handle. Your ankle will never be quite the same as it was, leaving you prone to return, decreased coordination, and chronic stiffness.”

Izuku blanched at her frank list of lifetime consequences. “But your quirk…?”

“My quirk,” she stressed with a sharp glare, “enhances the body’s natural healing process. It does not erase the fact that the injury happened in the first place.” Recovery Girl patted his leg with a soft hand before reaching under her desk for a pair of simple flats. “Unfortunately for you, they have been unable to find your shoe after clearing the minefield. Take these and get to lunch. You’ll need the energy for your continued foolishness.”

Izuku dropped his leg and took the flats with a quick bow. "Thank you Recovery Girl!" The white wrap looked even more startling against the black shoes.

"Thank me by not injuring yourself even more." She whipped her syringe-shaped cane up and poked him harshly in the shoulder. "Now git!"

"Right!" Izuku leapt up from the chair and spun around towards the door.

Before he could leave, her cane bonked him on the head." I said be careful! No sudden movements!"

Izuku looked back at her, aghast. "That's like... my whole thing though!"

A dark aura surrounded Recovery Girl as she somehow loomed over him despite her shortness. Izuku flinched backwards as her cane rose up, but she only poked him in the forehead this time. "I. Will. Be. Watching." She emphasized each word with a poke to his face. "Understand me?"

"Yes ma'am!" Izuku managed to dodge the last poke before turning out of her temporary office." Thanks again," he yelled back at her.

"Midoriya." Izuku suddenly froze as he caught sight of Todoroki leaning against the wall across from the door. Izuku felt his smile drop to match his classmate's dark look." I need to speak to you."

Izuku glanced around the empty hall, almost expecting one of his friends to pop out of nowhere to save him. Unfortunately it seemed like he'd have to deal with a definitely uncomfortable conversation on his own. At least Recovery Girl was close enough to hear if anything went wrong." What about?"

"Not here," well there went his last bid for rescue," follow me." Todoroki pushed off the wall and set off down the hall without another word. The assumption that he would just mindlessly follow rankled.

Whatever he wanted to talk about was obviously important to Todoroki, he's never even said a word to any of them in class. Even the teachers barely ever called on him in exercises. So it must mean a lot for him to ask to talk with him. Which meant he had to go meet with him. But what if he was angry about the second round? He did look pretty pissed. He wouldn't try to attack him over it, right? That wouldn't be very heroic after all. Plus, that would definitely be against the rules and someone like Todoroki wouldn't risk getting kicked out over a grudge. Unless that was exactly what Todoroki wanted him to thi-

Izuku was broken out his rambling thoughts by the sharp smack of Recovery Girl's cane to the back of his legs. "I thought I told you to git!"

"Sorry!" he yelled before running down the hallway to catch up with Todoroki. He passed the student waiting room and contemplated stepping inside to get his father's scarf. He might need the extra emotional support for the ensuing conversation, but the chance of someone dragging him off to lunch was too high. He would just have to do without.

Izuku found his classmate leaning against the wall near the student entrance, looking out towards the far treeline. A breeze ruffled his hair as Izuku copied him on the opposite wall. He started to fidget the longer the silence continued to grow between them. Against all logic, Izuku was terrible at being still unless he was specifically mimicking something. Todoroki just continued to stare out into nothing.

Finally tired of the silence, Izuku spoke up. "You wanted to talk? We're going to run out of time for lunch."

"Midoriya," he said without taking his eyes off the treeline, "your quirk is so strange. Teleportation. Telekinesis. Transformation." Izuku grew nervous at Todoroki's blank tone. People questioning  _ Shift  _ never went well for the Midoriya family. “It’s bothered me before, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since the end of the second round.” Todoroki suddenly jerked his head to face him and startled green met intense grey-blue. "Did your parents make you too?"

_ D͖̐i͍̟͊͘d̰͙̣̆͛͐ ̧̛͍̔ş͍̾͜͝͡ô̺̙͈̖͛̈́͡ṁ͖͜eon̬̤̰͍̏̚͠͡ẽ̠̜̄͘͢͟ ̧̞͓̹́͌̉͡m͍̖̼̃̅͘ả̦k̛͕̞̐͐͢e̯͗̃͜ ̛͕̩͙͂͡͡ͅẏ̱͉̙̤͗̏͆̍͜o͎̬̦͂̒̔ű̪?͚̺̐̑ W̥̤̄̉e̱̙̰̥̋̓̓͘̕͢r̳̱͢͝͠͞ȩ̛͕͔̄͝ ̫͈̺̿̚͞y̛̫̯͕̫̿̕͘o̫͙̾̐ư̲̘̙̖͐̌̑ ̗̩̿̃m̟͐̾͟ā̺͉̮̌dẻ͟ ̠͛f̧͐o̫̻̣͎̠̊̽̓́r̘̗̗̮͆̏͊̅ ̢̛̲͆so͈̰̾͒m̼̥͉̠̓̎̃͜͞e͖͆t͕̥͉͆̿h̩̬̜̃́̈́͜i̞̦͐́n̨̮̮̤͙̑̅́̆͡g?̪̯̎̌͂͟ _

It felt like an invisible weight suddenly settled on Izuku’s chest, slowly stealing the air from his lungs. "What.." he trailed off, voice weak and airy. He gulped before trying again. "What did you say?"

"You're like me, aren't you?" Todoroki stared at him with piercing eyes that pinned Izuku in place against the wall. "Built for a single purpose."

Static started to fill his ears, making it difficult to pay attention to his classmate. Shadowy memories of  _ something _ threatened to choke the breath right out of him. If only he could remember. A dark shape writhed in pain, just out of reach, hidden by layers of sheet metal. He couldn't see his friend, but still knew They were there. He could feel it. Could feel their hunger. Could feel them dying.

"Endeavor bought my mother's relatives to get his hands on her quirk." Todoroki's words slowly started to filter through the ringing in his ears. "And now he's raising me to usurp All Might." The darkness receded, leaving Izuku panting as he tried to focus on anything but The Black. "I hate it. Being no more than a tool for that scumbag. In every memory of my mother, I only see her crying."

_ Izuku, honey, no, remember we talked about this, calm down. Please, you don't want to scare mommy, right? _

"I remember," Todoroki continued, unaware of his audience's wavering attention, "she called my left side unbearable, right before she poured boiling water on my face."

_ I'm so very happy to finally meet you Izuku. _

"By rising to the top without his fire, I'll have denied him everything." The dark look on Todoroki’s face was almost sickening. He hated not just his father, but also half of his own quirk. Half of  _ himself _ . 

"My parents love me!" Izuku suddenly blurted out, feeling as surprised at the words coming out of his mouth as his classmate looked. "I wasn't made for some grand purpose like beating All Might, I was born from their love!"

Todoroki clicked his teeth and looked away, back towards the treelines. "I shouldn't have assumed you were like me." He pushed himself off the wall and started to walk away. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

"You're wrong you know," Izuku yelled at his retreating back, “about your quirk.” He may have been angry at Todoroki earlier, but it all felt so petty compared to the hate the dual-haired teen felt towards  _ himself _ . “Do you know what I would give to have a fire quirk like yours?"

Todoroki froze for a moment before whipping back around, eyes full of anger. "What would you know-"

"My dad can breathe fire," Izuku said, cutting Todoroki off as he stomped towards him. The embers of rage that had simmered down since his win began to flair up in his chest again. His heart pounded in time with his steps as he very quickly crossed the distance between them. "He used his quirk to keep my mom and I warm in the winter." 

"What does that-"

"He went missing the same night I was born!" Todoroki froze as Izuku came to a stop in front of him. “My mom went into labor and dad left to get help. He never came home. The police didn't even bother to look for him." Izuku wasn't exactly sure why he was telling Todoroki this, didn't see how it could help anything beyond evening the 'share tragic backstory' scale. "We've spent fifteen years with people calling him a deadbeat, saying we were abandoned, ostracized by our neighborhood. All because we know."

Heat flared in Izuku's chest. "We know he's still with us. That he loves us." Todoroki looked lost as he continued to stare blankly at him. It only served to make Izuku even angrier. "I would do  _ anything _ to have a fire quirk like my dad. Like you. To have just one more link to him."

"It's his—"

"It's yours!" Izuku yelled over him. "And I would love to have it! But I don't. I have my 'strange' quirk. Which I am going to use to beat you here. I won't limit myself like you do. I want him to see me, wherever he is, and be proud! I won't lose to you!"

Izuka wasn't quite sure what reaction he expected out of Todoroki at his declaration. And yet, he was still disappointed when his classmate simply turned and walked away without a sound. He would have stood there like an idiot for the rest of lunch if it hadn't been for the familiar hand that grabbed his arm and yanked him back inside.

“IcyHot isn't worth the tears.” 

Izuku sniffed and wiped at his face, not exactly surprised that he’d started crying at some point, even if he didn’t realize when. Excessive crying is practically a secondary quirk of the Midoriya family. “He’s hurting himself out of spite. It’s just so  _ dumb _ .”

“So’s crying over it. What do you care anyway? Twenty minutes ago you hated his guts.”

“I didn’t hate him.” ‘ _ He was going to crush Todoroki.’ _ Okay, maybe he hated him just a bit. A tiny, little, too small to even matter, bit. And he got over that obstacle by outmaneuvering him for the win in the second round. Izuku would call that personal growth. 

“Kacchan!” He gasped, finally realizing what it meant that his friend was here. “How long were you listening?!”

The blond wouldn’t meet his eyes as he continued to pull him down the hall. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Those broccoli extras you hang around with couldn’t find you for lunch, so I went lookin’.”

“Stop calling our classmates ‘extras’ and stop trying to distract me! Did you hear my conversation with Todoroki or not?” 

His friend just smirked. “You’re imagining things.” A familiar childhood jab at his tinnitus. 

Izuku started hearing the sounds soon before his tenth birthday. It started small, he’d hear what he thought was a small rodent skittering around in the walls, or someone whispering too far away to understand. The noises would come and go randomly, always distracting him from schoolwork or his notebooks. He’d question his classmates, teacher, even his mom on the sounds that only he could hear. ‘You’re imagining things,’ they would say. It was absolutely maddening. It only took three years for the ringing whispers to become his constant irritating companion.. 

It took years for Izuku to willingly step into a doctor’s office after the mess with the quirk counsellor. And then even longer for his mom to finally find one that could be trusted with his medical history and  _ not ask difficult questions _ . In the time between getting a referral to an otolaryngologist and when the ringing whispers first started, it was too late. His middle school classmates latched on to ‘crazy like his mother’ rather than the diagnosis of tinnitus of unknown causes. 

It wasn’t all terrible. Deep brain stimulation was what led him to Igwe, afterall.

Izuku stumbled as a wave of sound coming out of the cafeteria knocked him out of his wandering thoughts. Kacchan had lugged him all the way here while he was distracted. The members of the Green Haired Weirdos Club mobbed them before he could continue to interrogate Katsuki.

Tokage reached them first and yanked Midoriya out of Bakugo’s hold. “Mido! That ending was so cool!” She yelled while shaking him by the shoulders. “You were so right about the Cavalry Battle!” 

“Congrats on the win, kero,” Tsu said, still looking a bit steamed from her loss. 

Shiozaki was far more calm as she pulled her classmate away from Izuku. “I see you have been healed. I hope you have found peace with your win.” 

“The Business Course is all abuzz,” Okabe said with an easy smile. “Your stock is definitely on the rise!” 

Bakugo, obviously fed up with all of the noise, pushed his way through the crowd with a growl. Izuku quickly followed with his green-haired compatriots tagging along behind. The group ignored the various students yelling congratulations as they traveled to a massive table ladened with food in the back of the room, near the windows and teacher’s tables. The rest of Class 1-A had apparently shoved a whole row of them together in order to fit most of their class. 

“Yo, sweet win Mido-bro!” Kirishima yelled down the table as they took up a chunk of empty seats. Izuku just smiled back crookedly, nervous at the attention he was getting. At the eyes that wouldn’t stop staring. 

Kaminari leaned around the redhead and flashed a thumbs up. “I had no idea you were so cool, Deku!”

“Don’t say that!” Bakugo yelled as he slammed his fist against the table. 

The other blond jerked back, hands up in alarm. “Jeez, chill. You call him that all the time.”

“Yeah!” Uraraka agreed from the other side of Kirishima. “Why do you get to call him Deku? I really like it! It’s got a ‘you can do it!’ vibe!” 

Izuku grabbed Katsuki’s arm before he could destroy something, namely the food in front of him. “It’s a childhood nickname, please don’t call me that.” 

“Ever since childhood, huh?” a slimy voice said behind them. “Why does he get something cutesy like ‘Kacchan’ and you get called useless?”

Tokage, who had taken the seat across from Izuku, bared her sharp teeth at the blond looming over him. “Where’s your babysitter, Monoma? Finally tired of cleaning up after your messes?”

“The only mess I see,” the blond said as he made a wide gesture towards the table, “is the one you’re making of our class’s reputation by hanging around our less than reputable peers.” 

“You’re just pissed I didn’t go along with your dumb plan to hold back in the first round,” she hissed back. “How well did that work out for you again?” 

Monoma opened his mouth to retaliate, but a vine wrapped around his chest before he could get another word out. The vine chucked him screaming across the room, where a giant hand rose out of the crowd and caught him before he could hit the ground. Everyone turned their focus to Shiozaki, who simply continued to pick from the trays spread out along the table without commenting on what happened. Eventually, the other students at the table slowly joined her. 

Izuku was also about to reach for a plate when a bento slammed down in front of him, nearly crushing his hand. “The old hag made this for you, since you keep ducking out on dinner.” 

“I’ve been...busy...with stuff…” Izuku trailed off as he gingerly opened the box in front of him. Busy dodging his friends and classmates. Busy ignoring the USJ. Busy staying up late to avoid nightmares and the memories of a hand reaching for him from the darkness. 

Izuku violently shook his head to disperse the fog and dug into his  unajū. Eel was his absolute  _ favorite _ but far too expensive for his mom to keep in the house. Like ever. Dinners with the Bakugo family, with one parent a highly sought after accountant and the other a fashion designer on par with Best Jeanist, were really the only chances for Izuku to eat his fill. Mitsuki didn’t even bother with fruits or vegetables, and instead a large bounty of unakyu waited for him to dive in. 

It felt like time passed quicker than usual as they scarfed down food and the warning bell sent students scattering to the doors. Izuku shoved one last cucumber and eel roll in his mouth as he followed Iida and Yaoyorozu through the halls and out into the stadium. 

“Aaaaand We! Are! Baaaack!” Present Mic greeted the crowd, who answered him with a ground-shaking roar. “Before we get to the final event, I’ve got some great news for all of those out of the running: recreational events perfectly suited to everyone!! This is still a sports festival afterall!” 

Students from all of the different classes entered the field, some looking far more excited than others. Several of the General Education students kept shooting glares at Snipe, who stood tall in the stands, counting each of his charges as they sulked through the gate. Class 1-A looked the most chipper, even if Koda looked like he was trying to hide behind Ojiro. The sheer difference between their heights made it laughably impossible. 

“Once all of our fun little games are over, we move on to the final event! A series of one-on-one battles!” The entire stadium looked up to the jumbotrons as an empty tournament bracket took up the screen. “The members of our top four teams will compete in pulse-pounding, bone-shaking, adrenaline-filled battles to crown the ultimate champion! You’re not gonna wanna miss these epic matchups!” 

“How convenient for the bracket that there were exactly sixteen of them.” 

“How about you conveniently shut it Eraser?” 

“How about you both shut it?!” Midnight yelled while snapping her flogger up at the announcer’s box from her spot on the stage. The stadium waited on bated breath, so silent you could hear a pin drop, for one of them to push their luck. When nothing was forthcoming, she continued, “The matchups will be decided by lots! We’ll let chance decide your fate!”

“Man, she’s really getting into it,” Kirishima muttered to Sero, who nodded in agreement. “It’s kinda embarrassing.” 

“I heard that boys,” Midnight purred as she held up a large yellow box. “I haven’t graded your tests yet you know…” Both of them yelled out apologies as they ducked down to hide behind Mina, who was both too short and too busy laughing at their expense to be any help. “Now, let’s start with the first place team!” With no more interruptions, it didn’t take too long for Midnight to run through the finalists. Within minutes, the brackets were set.

“Well this should be interesting.” Izuku looked away from the screen to glance over at Hitoshi. “I don’t suppose you’d lose for me, would you?” Izuku just stuck his tongue out at his friend, who responded with a smirk of his own. “Nah, that’d be too easy.”

“Aww,” both of them turned to Uraraka, who was frowning up at the board. “There’s no way I’m getting past Bakugo.” 

The blond in question folded his arms over his chest. “Least you’re smart enough to know it,” he said with a haughty sneer. 

“Hey Uraraka,” Izuku called over, “you said you wanted to knock the rich kid out of the competition, right?” All of his friends turned to him as one, looking utterly confused. Izuku just jabbed a thumb at his very first friend and then threw him to the wolves. “Kacchan is definitely a rich kid.”

“Deku, you fuckin’ traitor!” 

Uraraka’s eyes suddenly filled with fire as she spun around and jabbed the blond in the chest with a sharp finger. “Bring it on rich boy!!” 

“I’ll smash your face in, Round Cheeks!!”

“I just loooove all of their youthful energy~~” Midnight said, doing absolutely nothing to help separate the two. “It’s up to each of you finalists whether you participate in the festivities or not. I expect some of you would rather save your strength.” 

“Awww yeaaah!” Present Mic took over for Midnight with a yell. “Let’s get on with the festivities!!” 

Midnight had been right to say that most of the finalists wanted to abstain from the activities. While Uraraka and Yaoyorozu joined their classmates participating in the scavenger hunt and balance ball relay, most of the others scattered to prepare for the final round. Midoriya found himself holding an impromptu meeting of the GHWC that consisted of talking strategy with Tokage and Shiozaki. It really wasn’t fair that everyone else in the class knew about  _ Hardening _ and  _ Electrification _ except for them. Izuku had invited Awase to the meeting for fairness’s sake, but the other boy just waved him off and joined the tug of war match that had started up between Tetsutetsu and Kirishima. 

Quicker than he wished, Izuku stood at his entrance, waiting for his cue from Present Mic to enter the spotlight. While he didn’t particularly  _ want _ to go up against Shinso, growing up around Kacchan had desensitized him to the notion of fighting a close friend. Izuku was going to do his best to win, anything else would be an insult to Shinso’s own skill. He’ll win. He’ll make his parents proud. And then he’ll beat Todoroki’s dumb face into the ground. Since apparently that’s the only way to get the message into his thick skull. 

The Bakugo Brand method to life-long bonds of friendship. 

“The first match!” Izuku stepped out into the field as the crowd went wild. “Hopefully keeping up his winning streak from the second round, it's Izuku Midoriya, of the Hero Course!” 

“Verses...From the same team and the same class, it’s Hitoshi Shinso!!” Across from him, Shinso looked unaffected by the noise as he sauntered into the ring. “These two have worked together ever since the Entrance Exam! How ever will they duke it out now that their future is on the line?!”

“What’s your plan for this Midoriya?” Shinso called out as Present Mic started listing out the rules. “Are you even capable of shutting up?” 

Izuku bit his lip as he fought down the urge to say something, anything. The thought of being caught on international TV and his mother’s subsequent grounding was the only thing keeping him from flipping his friend off. He really was spending too much time around Kacchan. 

Shinso, probably seeing the effort on his face, just smirked. “You’re not actually fighting me, you know? But rather yourself. Do you have the strength to stay silent the whole time?” Hopefully, but he wasn’t feeling confident. Shinso was just that good at getting people to talk.

“Readyyyyyyyy!! START!” 

Izuku  _ shifted _ forward, too fast for Shinso to say anything, and aimed a punch for his stomach. Can’t catch him if he doesn’t have the air to ask questions. The taller boy had the height advantage though and easily stepped backwards out of reach. Maybe he could back him up out of the ring?

“I heard a rumor the other day,” Shinso started as Izuku continued to advance towards him. “Is it true that Kamui Woods has an uncontrollable case of termites?” 

Izuku stumbled over his own feet at the question, which luckily enough, stopped the instinctual ‘no’ he was about to scream at his opponent. Shinso smirked as he rushed him, taking advantage of his off footedness to try and kick him while he was (literally) down. Almost without thought, Izuku turned into a mimic and skittered away. 

Shinso took off in a jog as Midoriya  _ shifted _ back into himself several yards away, trying to close the distance between them before his opponent could regroup. Unfortunately he wasn’t fast enough and he landed hard when Midoriya  _ pulled _ his feet right out from under him. “That wasn’t very Plus Ultra of you,” Shinso deadpanned as he picked himself up. “What would All Might think of that?” It was obvious how hard that one hit him. Blood ran down Midoriya’s face from where he bit through his lip trying not to respond. 

“Yo yo yo! What is going on down there?” Shinso advanced on Midoriya as Present Mic yelled out grief about the boring match. “This crowd demands action!”

“You do remember that these are children, right?” Eraserhead got loudly booed by both attendees and his fellow teachers for that one. 

“Did you know that Aizawa and Yamada are secretly married?” Shinso asked as he aimed a punch for his opponent’s face. Rather than dodge completely, Midoriya caught Shinso’s hand with his crossed arms. Which is exactly what he wanted to happen. Shinso used his height advantage to bore down on his much smaller friend, forcing him to stumble backwards or risk falling and being pinned. 

Midoriya was just too good at escaping though. He  _ shifted  _ back towards Shinso’s side of the field, causing the purple-haired teen to stumble to the ground with the sudden loss. The greenet spun around to face him as Shinso picked himself up and dropped into the fighting form Eraserhead had spent the last two weeks drilling into their head. 

“Man, you really like seeing me lying on the floor, don’t you? You got something you wanna share with the class?” Shinso used Midoriya’s moment of sheer confusion to once again close the distance between them and aimed another punch to his head. Unfortunately for him, Midoriya sunk down into a pile of embarrassed teenager as he worked out the insinuation, causing his fist to sail well over his head. 

“Jeez, usually you never shut up. Really making me work for it today, aren’t you?” 

Midoriya and Shinso continued to chase each other back and forth across the ring, throwing out attacks while the other dodged away as the crowd jeered. Aizawa had pulled several of the students with less flashy quirks aside during their Heroic Informatics classes and drilled them on hand-to-hand combat. Shinso, Midoriya, Hagakure, and surprisingly even Tokoyami had spent the last fortnight learning all of the same moves. 

Meaning Shinso was going to have to actually catch Midoriya to get the win. And boy was he slippery. It felt like  _ Shift  _ was specifically created just to get away. 

“I know your secret,” Shinso huffed out as Midoriya dodged away from another punch. The other boy actually stumbled this time, so maybe he was onto something. “I know all about your little club. You’re gathering all of the other green-haired students in order to take over aren’t you?” He could see Midoriya struggling to not respond, even going so far as to wrap his arms around his head in an effort to block him out. He was close enough to taste his victory. “This is all Sir Nighteye’s plan for world domination, isn’t it?!” 

“WHAT?!” 

Two voices rang out over the silent crowd. Luckily for Shinso, one of them was Midoriya’s. Someone up in the stands started laughing loud enough to be heard down on the pitch. He ignored them all as he lowered his arms and relaxed in front of his frozen opponent. “Sorry, but this is my win. Now,  **turn around and walk out of the ring** .” 

“Whaaaaat?!” Present Mic screamed, breaking the silence of the stadium. “After that shocking revelation, it seems like Shinso finally has the upper hand! Will Midoriya lose here?!” The crowd, finally clued into the fact that something had happened, once again started to cheer. Even if they weren’t exactly sure what was going on. 

Shinso himself wasn’t sure what was going on. He’d caught his opponent in  _ Brainwash _ , the frozen limbs and blank stare were clear enough signs of that. But his commands  _ weren’t working _ . “I said  **walk out of the ring** !” Midoriya stayed frozen in place, arms still crossed over his face in an effort to block him out. 

“ **Forfeit the match!** ” Midoriya didn’t so much as twitch.

“ **Turn around and leave!** ” Shinso looked over to Midnight, who shrugged back at him. She wouldn’t call the match until it was clear that Midoriya lost. Obviously he had to be fighting  _ Brainwash _ in some way they couldn’t see. 

“ **Put your arms up in surrender!** ” There was some reaction to his command that time, but it was only Midoriya’s arms twisting around to face outwards in a harsh, jerky motion. 

“Oi!” Almost the entire stadium turned to look at Bakugo hanging half out the student box in the stands. “Just call it already!” The crowd yelled their agreement, but Midnight shook her head. 

Shinso huffed and walked towards Midoriya. “If you aren’t going to move, I’ll just have to move you myself.” He could probably push him with just enough force to move him without knocking him out of control. Hopefully. After the match he’s definitely going to get an explanation out of him, whatever it took.

Shinso just rolled his eyes. “Sorry about this,” he whispered as he got close and raised his hands to push. 

“ _**~~So̥͓͆̐rr̞͖̻̈́͌͟͝y̨̏ ̨̜͕̞̘̏͑̉̕͝a͉̒b̡͈͚̦͔̎̉͌͗ọ̗̜̊̊͠ut ͎̓thį̜͈̉̑̒s͎̒~~ ** _ ͟͝” his own distorted voice echoed back at him from out of Midoriya’s mouth.

It happened too fast for anyone to react. The very moment Shinso touched Midoriya’s raised arms, the crowd was hit with an invisible force and blinded by a huge plume of smoke. Everyone sat in fearful awe as the dust slowly cleared, exposing the ring. Midoriya still stood where he had been caught, purple-black arms now held straight down, hands curled into claws. His bright eyes blazed like white fire as he stared blankly at Shinso’s form crumpled up against the far wall. 

“Sh-Shinso is out of the ring!” Midnight’s voice echoed out over the silence as everyone stared at the large gouges that suddenly decorated the wall and floor of the stadium. “Midoriya moves on to the second round!” 

**Author's Note:**

> Four stories in, and I still don't know how to tag.


End file.
